Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Bridges

Today i decided to walk up the old RR tracks again, with an eye toward seeing what I could do with the several bridges which cross over the tracks. I duly took pictures, and when I got home I sat down to the computer to see what I had.

My original idea was to make black & white pictures of what I'd shot, but two of the three subjects really didn't convert to b&w very well at all. I played with the Photoshop™ filters for painting styles for a while, and still nothing seemed to work just right. But I noticed that turning up the saturation a good bit, something I do before applying "painting" styles to more closely approximate real paint from tubes, was starting to look like a slightly familiar style. I applied a slight amount of posterizing and then applied the texture filter to try to approximate the linen texture of old postcards. VoilĂ ! The top photo is the Van Zandt St. bridge, and the bottom shot is the Peary St. bridge.



However, the third shot really did work very well as a b&w picture. I think the variety of angles involved and the essential monochrome quality of the subject in the first place made this an ideal b&w shot. So here's the tangle of on- and off-ramps for the Newport Bridge as they cross over the old railroad tracks.


© 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger

7 comments:

  1. Nice Effects : Nice Photos.Your On The Right Tracks I Think!

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  2. they're great--look like oil paintings, and nice composition.

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  3. That top shot would look even better in B&W! These are way cool, Roy. I need to get new photo editing tools...

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  4. The top two, with the color 'popping' and the canvas texture, really do look like paintings. Nice job! -jayne

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  5. Wow I really like those pictures!Really nice.Have a nice day.

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  6. bridges are such wonderful subjects.

    what fun you have with tweaking photos!!

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  7. When I look at your photos I see the shots that I would have took! Only yours are in focus!

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