72 Hour Post Processing Challenge #671 - Closed, Winner announced!

[Dinobe]

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[mcgillro]

Copping out on this one - too difficult for me

But some great entries.

 

[RichardC]

Copping out on this one - too difficult for me

But some great entries.

Pretty sure it isn't What are you stuck on?

 

[Zapp]

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[BosseBe]

The challenge is now closed.
I will endeavour to get the judging done tonight.

 

[BosseBe]

So 18 entries from 13 participants, should I be happy or disappointed?
I decided to be happy!
It is a good number of both participants and entries.
Maybe if I had a better picture to use for the challenge more would have joined.

But on to the judging.
I generally preferred the entries that straightened the building instead of having it kind of leaning back as in the original.
The building looks more like a single sided building when straightened in my opinion.

Second runner-up: @WhidbeyLVR #2 the B&W version. Would have preferred to have it straightened but this B&W really works for me.

First runner-up: @RichardC #1

Winner: @Zapp DJR #1.

It was a close call between the first runner-up and the winner, but somehow I liked Zapp DJR's best.

Over to you @Zapp DJR!

 

[Zapp]

Thank you @BosseBe ?

The geometry of my #1 is far from perfect , the #2 is better from that point.
Straightened Kista building worked better for me than a leaning one, and I've found that some areas of the sky were distracting (IMO) - so those were the main things to take care of.
The rest are slider work, till the general look satisfied my taste (as usual ? ).
I will post the new one before noon tomorrow (CET).

 

[BosseBe]

Since we have had a lot of talk about photo as art on the forum lately, at least in the threads I have read, I thought I would take the opportunity to to talk a little about what I wanted to capture in this picture.
I choose to use a photo variant that I had not shown before, so from my point of view it need more work. (You might have seen another picture on some threads in this forum.)
My intent when taking the picture was to show the building as kind of a single sided building, hiding the other sides of the triangular building.
I have often seen that look of the building since I work in Kista where it is, and have wanted to make a picture of it showing that aspect.
Seeing it in real life means that your eyes and brain correct for the perspective, but in a picture you need to decide if you want to correct/change the perspective or not.
A hard call since the judge might have another idea!

So I hope you all enjoyed the challenge and will continue to participate.

 

[WhidbeyLVR]

Since we have had a lot of talk about photo as art on the forum lately, at least in the threads I have read, I thought I would take the opportunity to to talk a little about what I wanted to capture in this picture.
I choose to use a photo variant that I had not shown before, so from my point of view it need more work. (You might have seen another picture on some threads in this forum.)
My intent when taking the picture was to show the building as kind of a single sided building, hiding the other sides of the triangular building.
I have often seen that look of the building since I work in Kista where it is, and have wanted to make a picture of it showing that aspect.
Seeing it in real life means that your eyes and brain correct for the perspective, but in a picture you need to decide if you want to correct/change the perspective or not.
A hard call since the judge might have another idea!

So I hope you all enjoyed the challenge and will continue to participate.

It is interesting that you prefer the perspective corrected view. I have a "soft rule" for my wide-angle images that if the horizon is near the top or bottom of the image, I prefer partial or no perspective correction, because it just looks unnatural to my eye. The shorter the focal length, the less correction I want to apply, as I think the converging lines enhance the drama of the scene. For medium to telephoto images, correcting is fine, since there is a natural compression of perspective effects anyway. But it is interesting to see both points of view presented here, and I don't claim any superiority of my view over others.

 

[BosseBe]

It is interesting that you prefer the perspective corrected view. I have a "soft rule" for my wide-angle images that if the horizon is near the top or bottom of the image, I prefer partial or no perspective correction, because it just looks unnatural to my eye. The shorter the focal length, the less correction I want to apply, as I think the converging lines enhance the drama of the scene. For medium to telephoto images, correcting is fine, since there is a natural compression of perspective effects anyway. But it is interesting to see both points of view presented here, and I don't claim any superiority of my view over others.

I am still learning, I have been into photo again now for maybe 6 years and mostly on my vacations.
So thanks for the hints, I will try to think about that.

Since I am still learning, I hope to never stop, I go by what I feel is right now.
In this particular picture I like the corrected view, maybe because it becomes more dramatic!
I think both the uncorrected and corrected view has its merits, the uncorrected view with converging lines can give an idea of soaring into the sky.

 

[WhidbeyLVR]

It is interesting that you prefer the perspective corrected view. I have a "soft rule" for my wide-angle images that if the horizon is near the top or bottom of the image, I prefer partial or no perspective correction, because it just looks unnatural to my eye. The shorter the focal length, the less correction I want to apply, as I think the converging lines enhance the drama of the scene. For medium to telephoto images, correcting is fine, since there is a natural compression of perspective effects anyway. But it is interesting to see both points of view presented here, and I don't claim any superiority of my view over others.

I should clarify a bit. It is the distance that compresses the perspective, not really the focal length. The FL affects the magnification of those distant objects. So, for instance, a wide angle shot of a relatively distant skyline or mountain and forest with the horizon near the bottom or top, I would correct the perspective, but a shot up at a nearby tower or tree or down into a gorge, I would not.

 

[Rob Rider]

I am still learning, I have been into photo again now for maybe 6 years and mostly on my vacations.
So thanks for the hints, I will try to think about that.

Since I am still learning, I hope to never stop, I go by what I feel is right now.
In this particular picture I like the corrected view, maybe because it becomes more dramatic!
I think both the uncorrected and corrected view has its merits, the uncorrected view with converging lines can give an idea of soaring into the sky.

Dealing with perspective when photographing buildings is an old problem. In the early 1970’s I was introduced to using swings tilts shifts rise and shifts on the 4x5 view camera. The movements to correct correspond to software we use today. 35mm tried the tilt shift lenses for the same reason. The Hasselblad SWC camera had a different way to make the lines squared. When the building is photographed with the wide lens angles are exaggerated.
I saw an article many years ago where a Manhattan skyline was photographed from miles away with a big telephoto lens and it really showed the size of the high rise buildings.
It was interesting to see the different way the building looked in the entries as some were tilting back, parrallograms, or whatever the different software came up with.
I’m sure that architecture photography is a specialty for some.
The choices are different for each building for the optimal way to photograph it.

 

[Zapp]

672 is here.

 

[relic]

Interesting discussion on perspective correction. This may be crazy, but I found than when I'm scrolling upwards and looking at the images of the building in the various entries, in some the building seems to get larger at the top, in others smaller, so what I tried to do is the partial correction that made the building appear to be neither diverging nor converging as I scrolled upwards (as I said, this maybe crazy and may depend on other factors including subjective perception . But looking at all the entries now while scrolling upward, it seems that @rpatodia, @Rob Rider, and @Hendrik I think applied similar amounts of correction, so it may not be that crazy after all. I don't really understand this. Comments will be much appreciated

 

[Dinobe]

I decided not to correct the perspective, as this reflects our natural 'view' as we look up to tall buildings. Also as the photo was taken close to the building this perspective distortion is bigger so correcting it would make it more obvious.

This doesn't mean that I never correct perspective, just when correction becomes overly obvious I avoid it

 

[RichardC]

My boss discouraged the use of wide angles at weddings to avoid 'falling down churches'. It was drummed into me. Pre-digital age, it was an issue!

I always correct for verticals but I'm mindful that sometimes the picture needs 'stretching' after correction to make it look right. This generally involves guesswork

 

[BosseBe]

My boss discouraged the use of wide angles at weddings to avoid 'falling down churches'. It was drummed into me. Pre-digital age, it was an issue!

I always correct for verticals but I'm mindful that sometimes the picture needs 'stretching' after correction to make it look right. This generally involves guesswork

So I have to ask, what do you mean by stretching? If you should happen to have an example I would appreciate it as a picture says more then 1k words.

 

[Hendrik]

For some perspective on perspective correction, I highly recommend browsing on Shorpy.com. You will probably encounter any number of both successes and failures (for you) of correction. The bulk of the photographs were made using then-standard view cameras and the visual language insisted on vertical verticals. I agree with Lyle that leaving some latent distortion (to taste) seems the best compromise. YMMV

The tension between our knowledge and faith that buildings are plumb and our experience that perspective happens is always there when 3-D scenes are rendered onto planes, whether they are screens, prints or pages. Then we evaluate the immediate experience — that is, viewing a 2-D representation as opposed to building a 3-D mental map of the pictured surroundings that automatically corrects for the discrepancy. We have already constructed a 3-D map of our immediate surroundings.

 

[RichardC]

So I have to ask, what do you mean by stretching? If you should happen to have an example I would appreciate it as a picture says more then 1k words.

I will try to get as close as possible in Lightroom - but notice the 'aspect' slider is already at its maximum.

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......so, if I

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need to make the building wider, I can use the transform tools in photoshop. in this case, I think it's okay, but some minor adjustments were still needed in 'transform>distort' to straighten the building.

 

[BosseBe]

I will try to get as close as possible in Lightroom - but notice the 'aspect' slider is already at its maximum. View attachment 893642

......so, if I View attachment 893643 need to make the building wider, I can use the transform tools in photoshop. in this case, I think it's okay, but some minor adjustments were still needed in 'transform>distort' to straighten the building.

Thanks for the explanation and the pictures!
DxO does not have the same controls so I guess I have to figure out how to do it in DxO or see if it is even necessary.
I will have to compare your entry with what I get from DxO to see what the difference is.
Thanks again!
I'll try to show how I do it in DxO PL4, but maybe not tonight.