The Back Alley

This is a narrow alley in which I parked my car while I went shopping at a local supermarket today. The photo looks a lot better than the reality.

Night

Yesterday's photo showed a street scene with a building site in the background. At the end of the post I remarked on the fact that the photo made me realise just how fast my city was changing.

Driving past that corner this evening I suddenly remembered that I'd taken a shot there earlier this month, so I thought I'd show you what is standing there now.

I've become so accustomed to seeing that building that I'd forgotten that it wasn't there in 2014.

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Linking up to Our World Tuesday and Wordless Wednesday.

Why I like to shoot in colour

As I said in a previous post, I often shoot using a  high contrast black and white setting, but I always make sure to use RAW + jpg so that I have a colour version available as well. Although it gives me a rough idea of what the scene will look like, sometimes that high contrast setting just doesn't give the best result and then I go back to Photoshop to improve on the result.

This photo was one such case.

The high contrast version lost a lot of detail from the sky, so I tried several different edits in both black and white and colour and this was one of my favourites.

Before I started using a digital camera I occasionally experimented with black and white, but not often because film was expensive and it wasn't possible to switch back to using colour until the film was finished. However one thing I learnt back then was that putting a colour filter in front of the lens could dramatically change the resulting photo. Sadly there was no screen to show the result, so if I got it wrong, that was then end of it.

In the days of digital, shooting colour allows one to add that colour filter during the editing process, so here are a couple of different edits, showing just how much difference they can make.

First the infra-red filter, which darkened the blue sky and made the green in the trees look lighter and brighter.

And then the one that I'm not really too keen on, but had to show for comparison. The blue filter turned the sky really pale, with the clouds and crane becoming far less conspicuous, while the trees are now much too dark.

Finally a word on the photo itself. Looking at this photo which was taken a little over two years ago makes me realise just how fast my city is changing. There is now a big building standing on that spot. But there is still a lot of construction going on all over Johannesburg.

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Linking up with Through My Lens and Black and White View.

Fun with Photoshop

Sometimes reality can look quite boring and when it does I often see what I can create in Photoshop. This was one of those cases.

When I saw that tall tree with all the low branches broken off I just knew I had to get a shot. If only it had been in a more interesting spot, or perhaps even if I'd had more time to look for the perfect shot, I might have settled for the real scene. Instead I created something slightly surreal.

I went a bit overboard on my first edit, getting carried away with trying to emphasise the dramatic clouds. Eventually good sense prevailed and I toned it down somewhat.

Even so, I'm not sure I don't like the simplicity of this black and white version better.

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Linking to Scenic Weekends.

The One That Caused All the Trouble

Today I returned to the scene of yesterday's post. I hadn't been there for a few months and was surprised by the changes. All the animals have disappeared and the fence surrounding their home has been taken down. Apparently the owner is planning to build more shops and additional parking there.

For now this is all that remains in that area.

I'm not sure who lives there, but I imagine it's staff quarters. Their home is right beside the overflow parking area, not far from where I parked my car. In fact I was leaning against my car when I took this shot.

And the reason for the title? I took three shots, but when I looked at them, one was virtually black. I checked my camera's exposure settings and they were identical for that photo and one that was perfectly exposed, so there's trouble somewhere. I'm hoping the problem is with my memory card, which I dropped recently, and not with my camera. I'd hate to think that I may be facing the prospect of an expensive camera repair!

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Linking up with The Weekend in Black and White, Black and White View, Through My Lens and Outdoor Wednesday and Skywatch Friday.

The Painter

Although I carry a camera everywhere I go, I sometimes miss interesting photo opportunities because I'm too embarrassed to pull the camera out of its bag and get the desired shot. That's probably my biggest weakness as a photographer - instead of going ahead and doing the job at hand, I tend to worry about what other people will think.

Today when I was out shopping I spotted this scene, but I nearly let fear get the better of me.

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This post is part of  "Through My Lens".