Central Park

[Rhoads238]

Hey all,

Yesterday I managed to spend some time in the city, wandering aimlessly and taking photos. When I came across this scene I decided to set up my tripod and wait for the right passerby.

Edit: I just realized that I processed this photo with the brightness turned slightly down on my monitor, in power saver mode. I may have to go back and reprocess

Edit: Reprocessed the photo


_DSC3135_6_7_8_9_fusedsmall by rhoads238, on Flickr

I decided to walk down the same path and ended up stumbling across them again


_DSC3149small by rhoads238, on Flickr

Ill post more photos later as I finish them.


CC welcome,

Jason

[dje]

Nice shot Jason, well captured. The leaves look so fresh and green. The people add interest to the shot too I think.

As for your comment on brightness, I do think you could ease off the brightness and increase the contrast a tad.

Dave

[Shadowman]

Very nice, especially like the intimacy of the second shot.

[Donald]

If we didn't know, then I would have guessed that the second shot was carefully set up and posed. It works, really, really well.

Just a lovely scene.

[AB26]

Hi Jason,

I like what I see on my screen.

The colour image may be called flat due to the light, so what, we can’t always get it the way we want it. Maybe if you follow Dave’s suggestion it might not be so flat. I like the composition and the colour, the passers by makes it so much more interesting. Good shot.

The B&W is a well done conversion. Beautiful rich tones. No wonder Donald likes it so much. What caught my eye is the duck almost swimming out of the image. I would have liked it to have a little more space to swim “into” instead of “out of”. Great shot,…………….. but almost!

[Rhoads238]

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

Dave, when I reprocessed I decreased the brightness and increased the contrast slightly. I didn't want to go too far with the contrast though because the light green leaves quickly become over saturated.

John, Thank you!

Donald, I think sometimes shots taken in the moment are better than posed shots. You don't have to work to make a natural look when your taking the photo as is. Thank you for the kind words.

Andre, Thanks. I waited for the right people to pass through to take the shot. I focused on the area where they are walking with the intention of doing an exposure fusion. I had my first exposure set up from the spot meter on the same spot as the focus. When they walked through I grabbed that first frame with them walking through. Then I had to wait for the scene to empty. Which took some time to be able to finish the bracketing without anyone interfering in the shot.

As for the b&w i was very pleased with the way the conversion came out. As for the duck, I was able to move and flip it and it does slightly improve the photo. However it would take a good bit of work to make it look perfect and I didn't feel like investing the time to be honest.

Thanks again everyone.

[Rhoads238]

Here's another candid from central park. I really liked their attire and stance.


_DSC3219small by rhoads238, on Flickr

[Donald]

It's an interesting thing that for someone who grew up over on this side of the Atlantic in the '60s/70s, Central Park had this sort-of aura, and here I am looking at very good images of ordinary people just going about their lives enjoying the place.

NYC itself had this aura of magic, mystery, danger, 'different-ness' for us young people over here in the pre-internet, pre-24 hour TV days. And this thing called Central Park was somewhere we thought was not somewhere you wanted to be seen in alone.

Se seeing these images is so much more than just seeing images of people in a park. For me, there is a whole history thing wrapped up in it.

Great stuff.

[dje]

Hi Jason

I've commented on the colour image but the B&W's look very good to me too. That one on the lake in particular is a wonderful composition.

My daughter lived in NYC for 3 years in the early 2000's, on West 74th just near Central Park. I have some great memories of that park in winter and in summer.

Dave

[Rhoads238]

Thank you Donald that means a lot to me. New York is a great place to go to take pictures and I don't take advantage of my close proximity often enough.

Dave thanks for the kind words and checking back. The park is a wonderful place to be all year round.

This was setup, but by someone else, I just stumbled across it.


_DSC3158 as Smart Object-1 by rhoads238, on Flickr

[dje]

This was setup, but by someone else, I just stumbled across it.


_DSC3158 as Smart Object-1 by rhoads238, on Flickr

It's hard to believe that John Lennon's assassination occurred more than 30 years ago. I believe his killer has had 7 applications for parole refused so far.

[rpcrowe]

Lovely shots! It is hard to believe that Central Park is snap dab in the middle of a city of eight million souls. Eight million people actually, probably a few of them are devoid of souls...

[Rhoads238]

Dave, I guess it goes to show my age but I didn't even know that this was his memorial.

Richard, It is hard to imagine that number of people. That number increases greatly when you add the number of commuters that are in the city every day. I saw somewhere that the record was 7.5 million commuters. There are quite a few that are devoid of souls though.

[Marie Hass]

Jason, I think we would be remiss if we did not include discussion of the designer of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmstead.

He had a hand in landscape design all over the US and Canada. Your lovely images are excellent examples of his vision.

Nice job. I love all of the images, but the B&W is outstanding. Did you use infrared mode as part of your processing or how did you push the sliders?

Marie

[Rhoads238]

Marie, Thank you. The park is really a magical place to be.

As for the processing, in ACR

Highlight and shadows almost all the way down
Boost white and black slightly
A little bit of clarity.

Curves, a slight s curve

Then for the b&w conversion

Red +18
Orange -8
Yellow +53
Green +51
aqua +3
Blue -49
Purple -33
magenta -4


Boosting yellow and green turned the leaves white-ish. once opened in photoshop I only used one curves layer to adjust brightness and add a very slight amount of contrast.

Thanks again for the kind words

[Marie Hass]

Nicely done. I have made note of your settings. Thanks for sharing.

Marie

[Rhoads238]

Nicely done. I have made note of your settings. Thanks for sharing.

Marie

No problem. I really liked the effect that it gave. I'm always willing to share. When I started out here on cic I had just bought my first dslr and knew nothing about post processing. Thanks to the generosity of the people here on cic, I've learned a lot.

Heres another one.


_DSC3192 as Smart Object-1small by rhoads238, on Flickr