615 - The Light

Funny image, huhh?? Well, I like the effect. This involved some weird tricks like overlaying a layer that was generated by “Filter / Stylize / Find Edges”, major pushes in the color department and a lot more. I was inspired to do this for two reasons: the reflection patterns in the tiles looked interesting and, more important, the highlights looked completely burnt out. I just had a discussion with Paul Lester about RAW vs JPEG, and if ever an image was a good example for why I shoot RAW, this is it.

Well, I’ve done all sorts of violent things to this image, don’t get distracted by the graphic syle. The point is, when you look at the lower right corner, there is nothing but white. Everything is clipped and gone. In RAW it took me just an exposure correction of -2.5EV, the details were back and the image was back in the game. But of course, Paul and I do completely different things to our images, and with the kind of shooting he does and his gentle style of post-processing, he won’t ever stress an image like I do here. In the end it’s quite simple: do what you need and what’s enough to reach your goals.

The Song of the Day is “The Light” from the Stranglers album “Coup de Grace”. Hear it on YouTube. Judging from the reviews on Amazon, “real” fans seem to dislike this album passionately. Well, I don’t 🙂