From my Photography Portfolio – ‘Upturned and Blue’
Location
Taken, as a lot of my photos are, locally. This is on Seaford Beach, just down from Seaford Head, a collection of small fishing boats that reside on the pebbles until time to go out and catch fish.
These are always the focus of many photographs, they are somewhat of a Seaford icon.Â
This will be part of my new Photography Portfolio, a new website dedicated to my photos.
My Thinking
Due to the popularity of these boats being used as the focus of photos, I wanted to try a more creative angle. I had in mind the desire to do some work in Photoshop for this shoot, so I took photos with this in mind.
I wanted to try and make them look like they could of been taken pretty much anywhere, except possible to those of us that live in Seaford and can see the personality of these boats from a mile away. After all, I for one walk past these every day whilst walking my dog Dylan.
Photoshop
The photos taken with my trusted Canon D300 and a 12mm wide angle, which has proven to be the most reliable camera I have ever had, not to mention it surviving 3 months circumnavigating Egypt, one whole week of which was in the Black and White desert.
The Photoshop process was actually pretty involved as I spent a lot of time tweaking the brightness and contrast of individual pebbles and also creating a much more dramatic sky,. You will also noticed the sun hitting the hanging rope from the blue boat, this thin line of white was enhanced with the ‘dodge’ tool.
Clearly I had to cut-out the boat in order to colourise it as I have. This was simple, but creating the right depth of blue to set against the grey took some trial and error. It involved a lot of retouching of the blue hull to create this soft almost plastic type look, and to scrub out any imperfections. I wanted it to look like it was just painted, which in fact it just had been, but was showing signs of wear and tear.
Overall
This is one of my favourite retouched photographs, one that I feel really works and goes to make the picture a joy to look at.
See other selected photographs from my Portfolio
And breathe...
Article Posted On: February 23, 2009 by
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I’m loving that blue first of all, and your work on the lighting is great.
Nice Shot. You are creative. I need help with a simple photo/video blog on wordpress. I just want it to look really clean, yet cool. No advertising planned. I started one, but I don’t want it to look like a stock template. If you can’t help, can you point me towards some nice templates please! I’ll probably be able to figure it out slowly from there:-) Thanks
beautifully done black and white. And that blue is amazing.
Wonderful mix of beautiful black and white contrast and a splash of color. I love it!
Appreciate the kind words, I am really quite proud of this photo, which probably is obvious. I have some more I am working on that I hope to be able to show on IJC at some point.
your good
1st of all I love black & white photography and you have captured really nice contrasts and lights, creates a mood, and then bam, the blue. Love it!! I need to get a web site up for my photos, used to have one through the company I worked for but have not made my own yet. Need to work on that this year.
It looks good. Just a suggestion though, you might try to move the boat so that its position is in one third of the picture, rather than in the middle. Just an idea.
Superb image, very evocative, personally I am a sucker for very close in wide angle work.
“It looks good. Just a suggestion though, you might try to move the boat so that its position is in one third of the picture, rather than in the middle. Just an idea.”
Please don’t. Zstimpert, more time with the camera and less reading theory that is only meant as a starting point would be a good thing. Sure you don’t want the photographer to draw a tic tac toe grid over the picture?
This has great tension.
[...] This image by Graham Smith stopped me in my tracks this morning. Personally I think that the selective coloring thing has been done to within an inch of it’s life but here it really does add to the image. I do happen to be a real fan of close in wide angle work, gives almost any subject impact. Here is an unrelated tip – use it for portrait work. That is not one you will find in many photography how to books but it is used all the time by professionals. Possibly Related Posts:Excellent Twitter Article NYTIs the social web trivial?Photography philosophy – must readGoogle goes all 2nd Life on us.Photography studio single source lightingZooming using Firefox Bookmark this Hide Sites [...]
Fantastic colour blue. Works really well. The overall layout of the picture is spot on. May be a slight soft burn along the ridges of the boat just to give it some body, but otherwise a great shot, definitely has a ‘wow’ factor.
Ah, I love to be inspired to take more photos – thanks for sharing the photo and your techniques used, going now, to dust off the camera lens…
the composition doesn’t really make sense. My eyes get lost and I don’t know what the subject is. Clearly the boat was intended to me because of the coloring but it fights with the composition. It does seem as if you are skilled with photoshop though.
@ Jeremy. I disagree. The composition works well imo. Starting with the blue boat the eye is lead to the rope/wire coming off it and leads your view down to off centre where it is then pulled up by the bright part of the sky. Bit cluttered in the centre but the two important elements in this picture are the boat and the sky and the eye is lead from one to the other in an ordered fashion.
My 2pence worth :-)
I think its a very interesting picture. For me, my eye is drawn along the sparkling pebbles and up towards the sun shining through the dark clouds (or the heavens opening?) The colored boat in the foreground is secondary, with the colour giving it a little personality.
There’s something about it that reminds me of Philip Dunn, subject matter?, glassyness of the pebbles?, Colour of the boat?. I’m not sure. I enjoy it though!
Interesting to hear the conflicting views on one photograph, curious to hear both sides.
Im not a trained professional, merely a enthused amateur, but I do feel I have a gift for natural composition, doesn’t have to fit in with text book theory… I doo things my way. If I like the end result then that’s good enough for me.
If others like it then great…
But its nice from time to time to share. I dont want to get pigeoned hole as a logo designer, as I do have many other interests and ‘talents’ so this post was just a small reminder about other aspects of my creativity.
Great!
Nicely done. Personally, I would have supressed the sun in the sky as it is visually dominant and directed the viewers attention more to the boat. Ultimately, you took a picture of the boat…not the sky, so making the boat visually dominant would make sense. Just some constructive criticism. Nice Photoshop work!