In Search of Clear Focus

Last night, I processed two more photos from the Bethesda PhotoWalk.  They’re up on Flickr, but I wanted to link them here, as well.

I took the shot in an alley next to this stage in Bethesda. I liked the simplicity of the poster against the texture of the wall. I pushed the colors a little in the poster and stripped a strong yellow tint from the wall, in order to almost make it almost monochrome. I worked for a bit on burning in the bright highlights on the right, but didn’t get them down as far as I wanted. I probably need to reprocess the raw image, reducing the exposure, then merge the two together, but I need to really up my Photoshop skills for that.

This sprinkler bell was down a set of stairs and I loved the old look to it, highlighted by the fading paint along the top ridge. Here, I used one set of curves to add contrast to the bell and another set to do the same for the wall. The exposures of each were so different, I ended up getting more experience with layer masks that I had anticipated.  I had to burn the upper left corner quite a bit, as sunlight was creating a real hot spot up there. I’m not sure if I left the bottom right of the image too dark, but I like this shot quite a bit.