Monday, August 8, 2011

Evolution of an image

I thought it would be fun to show how one of my favorite images came into being.  Backstory: I commute each day across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  Yes, that's the one where the roadway collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.  It's one of those drives where you don't usually expect to see anything even remotely photogenic.  But there's a spot on the western approach to the lower deck where you can see through the traffic and there's this one tree, almost perfectly placed against the sky and the horizon. 


I've been wanting to get this shot for a couple of years now, and a couple of months ago, I had my camera on the front seat with me as I was stuck in traffic, and traffic stopped just long enough for me to snap this photo.  As you can see, it's pretty ugly, but I thought just maybe, I can clean it up enough to make it look like the image I knew it could be. 

Several months, and several hours of careful editing later:


Then I thought to myself, I wonder what this could look like if I converted it to black-and-white:


Et voila!  Good enough for framing.  Or entering into a contest, which I have done, but have no chance of even being recognized, let alone winning.  But a girl can dream, right?

8 comments:

  1. Such a ridiculously good cloning job...seriously awesome!! And the black and white conversion is spectacular!

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  2. You did a wonderful job on your edit! Your really made your vision come to life.

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  3. What a fantastic cloning job!! I really love both of your final images. Beautiful work!

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  4. that's some grade A cloning!! Well done!

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  5. I am jealous of your cloning skills. Great job.

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  6. Great job editing it! Quite a transformation. I like how the clouds worked to balance the tree out too.

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  7. That was one awesome cloning job! I am truly impressed!

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  8. Wow! You did a great job with that.

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