One Photo Focus: March
Following on from the success of last months ABFriday (also known as One Photo Focus), I decided give it a go this month as well. The image sent this month was provided by Nancy Merrill of Nancy Merrill Photography.
The initial image:
Like before, I had no idea what the subject would be, but I guessed it wouldn’t be another boat. It would have course been too easy so instead the image featured a sign, some trees and a staircase. Not much to go on there I thought to myself. Truth be told, I was actually quite grateful for this as I knew I wouldn’t be able to dedicate as much time as last month but still wanted to have a go.
The editing process:
Unlike before, I started with deciding what the focal point was to be and then set about how to bring attention to the sign and make it stand out. While this may seem quite an obvious choice, it required a more consideration than I initially thought. As you can see above, I choose to edit the ‘globe’ shape first, highlighting the connection between Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre. Keeping with the circular theme, I applied a radial (round) filter and played around with the saturation and contrast. I then decided that as the tree’s didn’t seem to bring much to the image I would go for a square crop with the central point being the sign and desaturated the greens.
From there, I played around a few contrast settings (focusing on the orange/yellow/red hues) and also brought back some of the green as the contrast felt too stark. In the next stage, I applied a series of four graduated (straight) filters going from each edge towards the sign a then two from the top corners to allow for the curve in the sign. My thinking behind this was to draw attention to the sign but in a way that the eye gets led into the middle of the image. The final stage was to add some warmth back into the image to link the sign to its setting.
Will I be doing this again?
What was great about this image was that although it was made up of only three main elements, there was still a lot that could be done. In fact, having now written this post, I don’t quite know how I managed to do as much to it as I did. A great project, with an outcome I am happy with. What more could I ask for?
If this has inspired you to get involved in the One Photo Focus Series (and I hope it has), you can few the other entries here, and find out the details here.
CADEPhotographic 