1341 - Come Home

Sometimes I have no idea how I come up with Images of the Day.

Firstly, I have no idea why I took this particular image at all. It’s just a typical house in Villach. Something of the kind a lawyer or physician might have built at around 1900. There are lots of them if you look in the right neighborhoods, not only in Villach, this is typical Austrian architecture of that time.

Secondly, I have no idea why this was the first of yesterday’s images that I tried to work on. I just followed an impulse. With the foreground in shade and the bright, marbled sky, I quickly decided to take it to black and white, following the process outlined in “1338 – Pieces Of A Past Life I”. This time the black and white conversion took four different layers. The filters were “High Contrast Red” for the sky, “Maximum Black” for most of the architecture, “Infrared” for most of the vegetation and “Blue” for part of the street. Add some “Darkening” curves, a “Lighten” curve, both modified, maybe one more curve for contrast, a selective blur layer, a vignette, a toning layer and some sharpening. I liked the result, and so it ended up as Image of the Day. But still, don’t ask why 🙂

The Song of the Day is “Come Home” from the 1990 James album “Gold Mother”. Hear it on YouTube.


There are 4 comments

Colin Griffiths   (2010-06-16)

Well I think that it's a very striking and lovely image, and thanks for including details of your processing. Out of interest, what did you selectively blur?

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andreas   (2010-06-16)

Colin, I use a process where I copy/merge the image to a new layer, blur that with 50px radius, apply a mask, and then paint into the mask with a soft brush. This way I can set accents by bringing out contrast and sharpness where I want the eye to go. It's a very intuitive process, but of course what remains of the blur is strongest along the edges.

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Paul   (2010-06-16)

I really like the processing on this. It makes the house look ominous, something you mind find on the cover of a Stephen King book or described within the pages of same.

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andreas   (2010-06-16)

Yes, a little bit. My first thought was to use an ominous title as well, but then I decided to respect the feelings of the owners and go for a contrast 🙂

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