Flag Ladder Foolery
At the carnival the other morning, I found this "flag ladder" lying next to a white trailer. I propped it up against the trailer, noticed the strong shadow, and liked the shapes and colors. Back in the lab, the deep black shadows my eyes saw turned out to be not-so-deep greyish-blue. The photo at left is about the best I could do by just setting the trailer to white point in the Levels control (I use Photoshop Elements 4, so I don't have access to curves.)
I still wanted to see what my eyes "saw", so I used the polygonal lasso tool to select the shadow areas and make them really black. While I was at it, I lassoed the colored parts of the ladder so as to bring up the white areas.
Here's what the end result looks like. Definitely more dramatic, but did I overdo it? (BTW, the jpg here shows some jaggies along the edges of the black shadow, but in the full-sized image, the edge is very clean.)What do you think?
Labels: Canon 450D, Canon XSI, Carnival, Photoshop
posted by Steve Rosenbach at 12:28 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hi Steve, thanks for posting this interesting exercise. Personally, I would prefer a dark gray shadow vs. the totally black shadow of the 2nd version. The problem is with contrast. The totally black shadow on white trailer does not match the lower contrast of the colored part of the ladder. If you have time, try this:
- do the color and white enhancement to the colored parts like you did with the 2nd shot.
- leave the shadow along for now
- do the USM contrast enhancement trick (20,50,0)
- if you able to, and if it needs it, "burn" tool the shadow part.
- convert the colorspace to srgb
- save the file
The composition is indeed very dramatic, nice!
--Warren
i forgot to mention that on my test of your image, rather than lasso the colored portion, I dodged those parts to bring out the color. It's ust different tools to achieve the same results.
Actually, black shadow mixed with white wall should be a shade of gray. Think back on that scene. Did your physical eyeballs see a shade of dark gray, or pitch black? Did you see any details in the shadow area?
Or were you referring to your photographic mind's eye deciding that a black shadow would be more dramatic for the composition?
Just pondering...
--Warren
hi Steve, did you ever do anything more with this picture? Or no time? Or was it just a rhetorical question? :)
--WT
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