This image is from yesterday morning. I was packed like a mule and had decided to take the Underground to work. In Mariahilferstraße, where the station is, the first leaves are already falling, and it’s that tiny, yellow kind of leaves that will grace the street for maybe two months now. The way the leaves cling to the recessions of the manhole cover reminds me of a mandala, almost gone with the wind.
Technically, this was shot with the Sigma 20/1.8 (what else🙂 at f8, and then heavily post-processed in Photoshop. I have corrected the distortion (rather high for a prime, but we know by now that this is not any other prime, and so I couldn’t care less) in PTLens (I do that normally with architectural shots but don’t mention it most of the time), cleaned up some debris, drove colors into a yellow/purple opposition, pushed saturation, added tons of contrast and finally a vignette.
Holly Cole at the beginning of her career, singing Tom Waits’ “Purple Avenue”, a.k.a. “Empty Pockets”, that’s the Song of the Day, and you hear it on her 1992 album “Blame It on My Youth”.