On a recent weekend break in Liverpool my wife and I stayed in a hotel near the waterfront and spent a lot of time ambling round the re-developed docks, especially relatively early in the morning where we breakfasted in one of the cafés there. The Liverpool Tate is housed in some of the old warehouses along the dock front.
One morning, as we approached the Tate, I was impressed with the expanse of the building in the strong morning light and decided to take a quick shot. I only had my point-and-shoot camera with me and was inwardly telling myself that such an expanse of building needed the wide-angle lens that I have on my DSLR. The latter would have exaggerated the stretch, making it even more impressive. Nevertheless, I took the shot below.
I was disappointed with it. It seemed bland to me. OK, it recorded what was there, but it didn’t excite me. I did feel mildly pleased with the composition, having some foreground detail and a line stretching into the shot. However, before consigning it to the digital dustbin, I decided to see if I could rescue something from it.
The first thing I did was crop it, making it a ‘tighter’ shot. See below.
The narrowing of the shot, and the removal of unnecessary building on the left, seemed to increase the sense of the breadth of the building, which is what I wanted. It also seemed to give more anchoring to the foreground bollard.
I was unhappy with the sky. My friends always laugh at me about skies, but I think they can make or break a shot. There wasn’t enough ’strength’ there. I wanted more weight. I could have imported a darker sky, but, on this occasion, decided to use a subtle graduated grey filter in Photoshop to bring out more colour. See below.
The next stage was to reduce some of the ‘white’ light. There was a lot of it about, the sun was relatively strong, and it was tending to bleach out some of the colour, so I reduced the contrast to get more texture depth. See below.
In my opinion, this edited version was far better than the original, but it still didn’t excite me, and it was starting to look ‘chocolate boxy’. I think it was something to do with the garish blues and reds. I decided to transform it into a black and white version. This would focus attention onto the structural elements in the shot and introduce a more dramatic mood. See below.
I used a red filter in the black and white transformation. I liked the dark sky, but the building seemed too light and flat, so I increased the contrast to produce the final version below. I think it has more drama and bite, and seems a million miles away from the original. Personally I like the full range of tones from the white pillars to the black sky. The mood seems slightly sinister and appeals to me at an emotional level. The original doesn’t even begin to do that.
To see a larger version, click HERE.
Your final shot is nice. Thanks for sharing your creative process.
I sort of like the original. But each version has its charm. I suppose I would have to have been there to know what makes more justice to the structure.
The final shot is really good. I like it a lot. As you said, the lack of colour brings out the other aspects of the picture.
Well done!
You know already how much I like this image. Clearly a lot of thought goes into the final image creation. Your thought process of each stage is fascinating.
I enjoy these blogs and reading each stage. It helps my understanding of the process.
When I feel better completely and when I have finished my studies, I too will enjoy taking pictures again and will start to focus more on the editing, rather than just relying on shot 1 and 2 as my final photo to be shown on flickr.