Howdo! I can’t believe I’ve not written anything on here since September last year. Where has the time gone? Must have been having fun I suppose, now to try and recall what’s been happening…..
October was HDR month, after the topic was selected following on from a tutorial given by Dave Bickle on one evening after work and continuing into the monthly meeting. It was a great explanation of how Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) and High Dynamic Range pictures come about and how they can make a seemingly dull picture come to life.
Setting out my stall.
My picture came about during a trip around Shrewsbury Town Centre. One interesting location I’ve been to before and was not happy that I didn’t get a decent picture from is the Market Hall. I revisited there in the hope of a colourful fruit stall or some such but found nothing that piqued my interest.
On the way back down the stairs I noticed the geometry and angles that existed on this double sided stair case. The stairs remind me of my childhood as mum used to take my brother and I there in the late ’70s when we were kids. She used to do the shopping there after catching the S1 bus into town. We used to enjoy going as she’d often buy us a half-pound of candy sticks, (sweet cigarettes back in the day). The stairs haven’t changed in all the time that’s passed.
The stairs are a lifeless grey concrete with black railings and hand rails, probably to hide the years of grime, while the walls are just as drab and dreary. The final photo reminds me of an Escher illustration and while there are no single definite leading line, I found the stair cases to be quite a draw.
Baffled Bargain Buyers
I set up my camera on the tripod as central to the top hand rail as I could and had to wait until all of the busy bargain hunters cleared the shot.
You wouldn’t believe how long the waiting took, as soon as the left stairs were cleared someone’s head would appear in the right stairwell and so on. I also got some strange looks from the shoppers as they must have been wondering why I was taking a photo of some stairs.
The camera was my Canon 500D with my Sigma 10-20mm lens stuck on the front of it and I was using a cable shutter release to reduce the camera shake, it was a bit dark and gloomy after all.
With AEB set at +/- 1and 1/3 stops I set the camera into action to take the three shots immediately after one another. Most pictures I took in this batch came out ok but after I merged them in the Photomatix application I found that the colour version was almost a greyscale photo. It was for this reason I changed the mode and set it as a monochrome picture, it seemed to suit the grubby, grimy feel that I remember from my childhood as my mum, laden with cabbages (not me and my brother) made her way down to the Barker Street Bus Station to catch the S11 back home to Abbott’s Road.
Right Result
My picture didn’t win, and with an average of 13 from 20 available points it didn’t seem to connect with the people viewing and rating the images for the month.
Talking through the pictures with other members of the team I discovered that it was a boring picture with no real point of interest. In hindsight perhaps I should have used a picture with an interesting character coming up the stairs to have a real focal point. The picture means a lot to me because of the provenance of my memories but if that doesn’t translate to the viewer through the picture it’s meaningless to them.
The other HDR pictures submitted by the rest of the members were a cross section of all different types of HDR photos. Some were, in my opinion, a little over-processed and quite obviously a composite of images with some over-the-top effects and some were very subtle.
My picture was an HDR but I did try and tone down the effects that were applied to it so as to make it look more like a single exposure that managed to capture more detail than you’d expect.
In terms of lessons learned from this experience, I’d have to say that if a picture is personal to you and means so much that you like it go with it. Even if no-one else likes it particularly be happy with the result.
If you want to get the better reaction off the viewers then make the photo tell the story, if I’d had a kid being dragged behind his mum then that might have done the trick.
HDR is also a very divisive subject with some club members detesting it and some loving it for the extra “pop” that it gives the pictures. Sometimes though it’s too easy to go OTT and pop it too much, I’ve learned to be a little more conservative with my HDR’s thanks to this challenge.
The topic for November was Star Trails and I’ll write up a very short piece for that when I next get front of my wordpress app. Hopefully it won’t be another 4 months though!!
See ya soon!
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