847 - Reasons For Waiting

Oh dear, I’ve left you waiting again. This is a Friday morning image, it’s Saturday afternoon now, and I’ve played around with the image much too long. Here we are really back again, this is not dense, this is as much isolation as possible, and where not, it’s shameless cloning.

Actually I like this image pretty well. It began when I tried opening it in Adobe Camera RAW and, for no particular reason, put the “Clarity” slider all to the left. Well, this is an image taken with the Sigma 20/1.8 wide open, it’s focused on the front wheel, the background is in pretty much of a distance and already quite out of focus.

Take one of your images that are like that, i.e. have noticeable separation between a sharp foreground and a blurred background. Now take “Clarity” to the left. See what I mean? There is an increased separation. The background blurs out further, the foreground stays sharp, but there is kind of a veil over the image.

The effect alone is not very useful, the sharp parts suffer too much, but of course it can be used as one layer, for instance combined with another layer from a really good RAW converter, e.g. DxO, and a rough mask. I did not go for a precise mask (well, I tried, but it didn’t look good), I simply painted with the biggest, softest brush.

I’m pretty sure I could have had the same or a similar thing with two layers, one blurred and one not, but it’s always fun to try new things. For the finish I decided on tri-toning. Somehow it matches the mood.

So here we are. Another bicycle. So many of them are waiting out there, for whatever reasons, and if I find nothing else, there’s always one left for me.

The Song of the Day is “Reasons For Waiting” from the 1969 Jethro Tull album “Stand Up”. Hear it on YouTube.