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[Tijara]

Thanks for the link Indy!


Hi Everyone.

Many years ago Tech was very into photography, and had an SLR and dark room (access) etc but as many of you remember Photography was not as accessible in those days so his hobby kind of died. With the advent of digital cameras, we have gone through several point and shoots which have done us proud in terms of snapshots etc. However for years I have listened to Mark whine about our P&S and lament his old SLR, so at Christmas I arranged for Santa to stop by with a Nikon D40x for my good and very patient hero.

Needless to say the photography bug had taken a hold of him again, and me too for that matter. Let's say that Tech is the photographer and I am the editor, as I am doing most of the post processing stuff. We are both learning new skills and having a blast doing so.

So has anyone here heard of DPChallenge? We just joined there and haven't looked back!

DPChallenge was created in January 2002 by two friends, Drew Ungvarsky (drewmedia) and Langdon Oliver (langdon). The original idea behind the site was for it to be a place where the two of us and a couple of our friends could teach ourselves to be better photographers by giving each other a 'challenge' for the week. The idea quickly took off and became much more in the months that followed.

In December 2002, we released the 2nd version of our site with a number of new features, including concurrent challenges. We also added site membership as a way to support our ever-growing physical and time demands.

To date, 88,875 users have submitted 168,057 photographs to 799 challenges. 237,976 photographs have been submitted to 3,394 portfolios.

Basically there is one challenge for a normal (free) member per week, two challenges for paid up members. You get a topic, have one week to take a photograph it, upload to the site then your image is critiqued for a week.

I've never seen a bad comment on the site, it's always constructive and many of them will either say (in a good way) what's wrong and they will also tell you how you can improve.

There's a good forum to ask questions (no matter how silly) and there's also some great tutorials too on both the photograhy and the processing.


One of the current Challenges is "Abandoned Buildings". There is a stunning building kind of next door to us here in Jersey City that we have admired for years. So Tech took the opportunity to do a little trespassing and get some shots of it for the challenge.


The Powerhouse
 2008_01_12__036_mg.jpg ( 328.51K ) Number of downloads: 7

Tech did the post processing on this one, so other than a bit of cropping I am not sure what he did.

Arches
 2008_01_12__030_vic2.jpg ( 538.69K ) Number of downloads: 8

For this one, I cropped out the excess walls so that the frame was all about the window arches. I adjusted the levels then after shrinking to 640px wide I did a USM (Unsharpen Mask) just to sharpen up the definition that was lost in the resize. This one is my favourite as I love the way the light enters the building from the different aspects in each arch, but particularly love the repetition of arches (shadow& highlight) in the right window.

Abandoned Doorway (Competition Entry)
 2008_01_12__017_vic.jpg ( 533.18K ) Number of downloads: 7

This one needed almost no post processing. He framed it beautifully and the lighting was spot on so all I did was the USM after shrinking. This small version is pretty much identical to the raw image I love the detail on the brick work and how you can really see the textures.

Rusty Windows
 2008_01_12__109_vic_640.jpg ( 176.59K ) Number of downloads: 6

This is my other favourite and in fact have had an 8 x 10 print of it framed for our living room for Tech's birthday this week. It is also available for purchase in the DPC store
I did some cropping on the right as there was a disproportionate amount of tree there and straightened the image a fraction, adjusted the levels, resized and as usual applied the USM to regain some of the lost sharpness.

Hope you like them. We'd love to hear comments, criticisms and of course complements

Tech's portfolio is very slim right now but you can see the rest of it here.... Markie1006

[Tech]

One of the current Challenges is "Abandoned Buildings". There is a stunning building kind of next door to us here in Jersey City that we have admired for years. So Tech took the opportunity to do a little trespassing and get some shots of it for the challenge.


The Powerhouse
 2008_01_12__036_mg.jpg ( 328.51K ) Number of downloads: 0

Tech did the post processing on this one, so other than a bit of cropping I am not sure what he did.

There are normally several challenges per week you can take part in (although you can only be in one exclusive at a time).
Some challenges only allow basic editing, and some allow much more advanced post-processing, and as this was under consideration for submission to the Abandoned Buildings II challenge, only minimal processing was allowed.
It was pretty much just straighten slightly, crop, tweak the levels, resize and finally USM.

Fixing the levels and using UnSharpenMask were the first photoshop tricks I learned and they can make an amazing difference, even to mediocre pictures.

[J'iim]

Keep the tips coming... we can use them on our walkthrough and guide images.

[Ayli]

Congratulations Tech

All the pics uploaded by Tij can't be seen here. I get the error:

Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information.

[Tijara]

Congratulations Tech

All the pics uploaded by Tij can't be seen here. I get the error:

Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information.

Weird.... Oh Tech?!!!! Can you fix it please

[Lord Chaos]

When I click on the image links, I get a GoG page that says I don't have permission to view the content. After posting this I saw other comments saying the same.

Unsharp Mask is a basic technique required for any digital image, whether scanned from film or shot with a digital camera. The advantage of USM over the simpler "sharpen" tool is that you can vary its strength. The trick is to sharpen your image just enough, without going overboard.

Levels is handy for a lot of things. The color of light varies with the angle of the sun and which way you point the camera. Skylight tends to be blue, so if the subject is largely illuminated by the sky, using the blue slider in the levels tool can be used to subtly rebalance. I learned this from sand sculpture. I used to think light was light, but as I switched to using color film for sculpture walkaround sequences I learned that every photo had different color.

With digital cameras color balance is a little easier to handle because you can tell the camera what white balance to use. If the subject is mostly lit by sky, setting the camera for open shade (rather than cloudy) might work better. You need to experiment with your camera.

Note that all of these techniques work on KI images too. Anything I post from Uru has gone through the same process: levels, to get the brightness up and basic color correction, hue/saturation to get the color to look like what I remember, and then cropping and sharpening.

This post has been edited by Lord Chaos: Jan 15 2008, 12:42 PM

[d'rbeh]

still an error for me...

[Lord Chaos]

Thy link still worketh not.

[Tijara]

We found the problem... at last! It should be fixed now.

[d'rbeh]

really like the pics! good job, tech!

i especially like the abandoned door one.

[jarelav]

Behold ... it worketh!

The close-ups bring out the textures alot. I like how he made use of the natural lighting.

This post has been edited by jarelav: Jan 15 2008, 03:59 PM

[Lord Chaos]

Yeth. Thy linkth worketh now.

I like the composition and space. These are nice to look at. What is it about old buildings that make them so photogenic?

To my eye, however, they have all been sharpened too much. Everything has a bright edge to it. Less sharpening would leave the detail but make it more subtle. I used to over-sharpen too...

[Tijara]

To my eye, however, they have all been sharpened too much. Everything has a bright edge to it. Less sharpening would leave the detail but make it more subtle. I used to over-sharpen too...

It's really hard to see the best place to stop with this kind of thing. I guess with practice the eye gets more experienced and of course with the aid of good feedback

[Piran]

Thank you for sharing these. I enjoyed them very much. Abandoned Door and Rusty Windows are my favorites. It sure looks like it was a beautiful day for trapsing (sp?) around an old building!

I sure wish I had time to tinker so much with my photos. To be honest I am still learning how to use my camera. It's nothing special, but sure seems to have a lot of features. My photos are far from professional looking, but I love tinkering with all the settings and trying to get several different shots of the same subject matter.

[jarelav]

a beautiful day for trapsing (sp?)

Since you asked, its "traipsing."