More from the colorful canvas of the Geo W. Reed
After an unsuccessful attempt at our primary target location, a buddy and I fell back on the Geo W. Reed building as the backup plan early on Monday. I guessed it paid to go early since remarkably, we did not run into anybody else.
I had not been during the Winter season so in over half a year. The first thing I noticed was that most of the wall art had been renewed, which I guess demonstrates the vibrancy of the street art scene in Montreal.
As usual for this type of scene, I used mostly HDR to produce images since I prefer to avoid having totally blown windows, especially since I find that they are an integral part of the charm of the place. While we toured the place, the weather changed from rainy to sunny so that made for an interesting evolution of the light quality.
Although I have visited the place a few times, I tried to get different angles. Some of the images are quite similar to others I have captured before with some subtle changes in shadows or reflections.
As much as I like to visit the Geo W. Reed once in a while, I am definitely starving to discover new sites. I really have to step up my game, do more research, scouting to get into new places.
I inserted a gallery of all images produced that day. Please click on any to see a larger version.
Equipment: Canon DSLR 5D Mk II, Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L lens
Urbex in the Laurentians
Sometimes you have to get out of the city to get some real good urban decay! We went to explore an abandoned radar station in the Laurentians North of Montreal. The station is located at the summit of the highest hill in the area, giving it a magnificent vantage point over the surrounding lakes and forested hills.
All images are made from successively lighter and lighter exposures since I wanted to capture the indoor/outdoor thing since it was such a glorious with a nice cloudy sky. I used HDR software to perform the merger. Because it was very windy, I chose the sky from one of the exposure, processed it and masked it over the resulting HDR image.
Because of the very large dynamic range involved, it took from 7 to 11 exposures depending on the image.
The place is certainly worth the detour and I plan on returning in the fall to capture the autumn colors for which the region is so well-known for.
I inserted a gallery of all images produced that day including a few that have been previously published.
Equipment: Canon DSLR 5D Mk II, Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L lens, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens
A Word a Week Photo Challenge: ”Face”
http://suellewellyn2011.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/a-word-a-week-challenge-face/
A subject I see everyday but rarely use: my face. My own. I just made this image as my company profile picture.
Weekly Photo Challenge: ”Escape”
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/photo-challenge-escape/
Two more escape routes from an urban exploration trip last weekend.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: ”Spring”
The Edge of ”Civilization”
http://www.ceephotography.com/2013/05/14/cees-fun-foto-challenge-the-season-of-spring/
Spring in the Laurentians. Image produced from pictures taken Sunday while urban exploring. Full account to follow in a later post since I have quite a few photos to go through.
Glimmer of hope
I went for some urban exploration this Sunday and found an interesting site. I took a lot of pictures and have not had the time to go through them all yet. I prepared a single one to date.
For this image, I used a wide angle and put the camera as low as I could to create the tunnel effect. I framed the image by trial and error: shoot, check out the resulting image and move tripod. I could not really look through the viewfinder due to the awkward position of the camera. Because of the huge dynamic range, the image is produced from 10-11 exposures 1 EV apart. I masked in the sky through the opening from the best exposed image otherwise the clouds are fuzzy as it was a very windy day. Since 10-11 exposures are available, there is so many ways to process the image. I made this one quite dark but it would be quite possible to make the foreground much lighter. The problem with the lighter frames is lens flare which become quite apparent with the long exposures. I cleaned it up a bit as well.
So many more images to come…
Equipment: Canon DSLR 5D Mk II, Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L lens
A Word a Week Photo Challenge: ”Mountain”
http://suellewellyn2011.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/a-word-a-week-challenge-mountain/
I visited my sis three summers ago as she was residing in a small town (St-Louis-de-Huningue) at the border between France, Germany and Switzerland. During my stay, we took a day trip to Mount Titlis (3,238 m) in Switzerland. I took a few pictures but never really looked at them much as they laid dormant on a drive somewhere. Since I haven’t been to the mountains all that much, I had to look at them to see if some could be used for Sue’s challenge this week.
What I remember from that day is the insanely long wait to take the cable car up and that it was freaking cold in bermuda shorts at the summit…
Since the first picture is shot from the cable car through glass windows, it was lacking in local contrast. Conversely its global contrast was too high. I tried to make it usable by processing 4 images from -2 EV to +1 EV from the RAW and merged them into a single exposure with HDR tone compression. That helped with the global contrast issue. Then, I used local contrast enhancement to remove the effect of the glass and add clarity to the image.
I did similarly for the second image although it is shot from the summit, not from behind a glass window. I prefer the first image because we can see the valley snaking through the mountains.
As much as I like taking grand vistas in, landscape is not my favorite subject. The end result is never as grandiose as we remember the landscape to be. Also, I do no tend to have the luxury of revisiting same spot at various times of the day or the year. It is usually to be a one-shot deal during a trip. I guess I do like everybody else and I take a few snapshots to remember that day but in the end, I think that my memories are more vivid than the pictures.
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