Death in 20 minutes
Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2006 5:38 pmI had to take a photo on the subject of Death and not wanting to photograph road kill or some other such unpleasant subject I opted to play it safe and do a cemetery shot
with time running out to get the shot I was passing Rookwood cemetery on Tuesday evening at 5.30 when I realized I had twenty minutes to spare. So I drove in for a quick look not expecting find a worthwhile shot
as I drove around thinking... lighting is wrong, crap background, poor angles, boring shot. I was about to give up without taking my camera out of its bag when I spotted this group of crypts all laid out in straight rows with Identical crosses on top and the best part was that there a raised grassy mound in front so that I could shoot from high enough up to get the crosses without showing the crypts, thereby getting rid the crap background syndrome
the plan was always to do a semi Silhouette type photo but this was taken with the sun to my left with a clear blue sky and the front of the cross properly exposed so it needed some post processing. So I hit it with a very strong contrast increase using curves in photoshop to darken up the crosses and foreground elements then I converted it the B&W and played with different filter colors. I tried blue to give a night time feel but settled on orange to give a sunset look.
I know this is a long way from the scene in front of me when I took the shot, but it was the photo I had in my mind when I stepped onto the mound and I hope some of you like it too.
Crossing Over
C&C welcome
with time running out to get the shot I was passing Rookwood cemetery on Tuesday evening at 5.30 when I realized I had twenty minutes to spare. So I drove in for a quick look not expecting find a worthwhile shot
as I drove around thinking... lighting is wrong, crap background, poor angles, boring shot. I was about to give up without taking my camera out of its bag when I spotted this group of crypts all laid out in straight rows with Identical crosses on top and the best part was that there a raised grassy mound in front so that I could shoot from high enough up to get the crosses without showing the crypts, thereby getting rid the crap background syndrome
the plan was always to do a semi Silhouette type photo but this was taken with the sun to my left with a clear blue sky and the front of the cross properly exposed so it needed some post processing. So I hit it with a very strong contrast increase using curves in photoshop to darken up the crosses and foreground elements then I converted it the B&W and played with different filter colors. I tried blue to give a night time feel but settled on orange to give a sunset look.
I know this is a long way from the scene in front of me when I took the shot, but it was the photo I had in my mind when I stepped onto the mound and I hope some of you like it too.
Crossing Over
C&C welcome
