Jazirat Al Hamra

[dubaiphil]

Jazirat Al Hamra is an abandoned old village near Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE. It's fallen into ruin over the past 4 decades and has lots of great photo opportunities. I'll post a set here as I process them over the next couple of days.

And for a change, in glorious technicolour. This is going to be a great location for a photoshoot with a couple of models.


1.




2.




3.

[ShaneS]

I can't wait to see more from this series Phil. I really like the clarity that you achieved in the image with the truck and how you have somehow avoided getting that clarity without the image appearing to contrasty. This appears to be the case with most of your images and I really admire that quality of your work.

I seems to struggle to this in my images so even though these may seem like a newbie questions, I'll throw them out there...I'm guessing that this result due to perfect in camera exposure settings combined with good PP skills. I see that you shot a f8 1/640 ISO 100 at a focal length of 35MM on a full frame camera. Did you use a prime lens or put another way was this the result of good glass on a full frame camera? Was there a lot of PP done on the image (I suspect not but, again, I will throw the question out there)? What type of metering was used?

I hope that I have asked the right questions and if I haven't please enlighten me...

[Clive Kirby]

Hi Phil
Great subjects and nicely exposed - especially no 3, with the strong contrast of shadow and open sunlight. Nicely composed as well. Personally I like no 1, just personal preference - the quality of photography is good in all three.
regards
Clive

Shane - I wouldn't worry too much about equipment. Good lighting and exposure are the key. The D40 is a good camera. Try viewing your shots on the camera screen, you should be able to set it to flash blown highlights and to show the histogram, try to get a good spread in the histogram with negligible blown highlights. If necessary adjust the exposure with shutter speed or exposure compensation - depending on which mode your shooting in. There should be plenty of articles in c&c tutorials about histograms. Hope this helps and apologies if I'm going over stuff you already know.

[dubaiphil]

Thanks guys - for once I was shooting in Manual and under exposing by 1/3rd to 2/3rd stop. The lens for these was a 2/35 Carl Zeiss Distagon - my favourite - and its colour rendition, sharpness and microcontrast help a lot.

So there wasn't a great deal of PP, mainly around the areas of decreasing luminosity and increasing the saturation slightly for blue, red, yellow and orange to bring out the buildings' colour and darken the skies. I then increased the tonal contrast a little using Nik Color Efex Pro.

Here's the next batch - a few black and whites this time:


4.




5.




6.




7.

[Shadowman]

Nice images. You and Mike Buckley are scaring me with your abundant use of colors lately.

[Clive Kirby]

Phil
I suspected that they would make great b+w, not much colour variation in the first posts apart from the sky. I particularly like the dark ominous tones in the sky in b+w. No 5 is my favorite.
regards
Clive

[John 2]

Very nice set Phil. The mono conversions are particularly good and the full frame quality certainly shines out. Look forward to your model shoot.