More ruin porn

[DanK]

This is a very complex shot, and I am not entirely sure what I want to do with it or whether it's worth doing more. So far, the editing is quite complex--apart from a few basic things in LR, I have 17 layers in Photoshop. I think I may have slightly overcooked it.

All comments welcome, save one: yes, I saw the power line. It's very hard to get it out, even with content aware fill; the section over the bricks has to be done as a series of small adjustments, or it looks blurred. So I'll tend to that if and only if I get to something worth the additional time.

I saved this in a larger size, so you can see more in the lightbox if you want.

Thanks

[xpatUSA]

This is a very complex shot, and I am not entirely sure what I want to do with it or whether it's worth doing more. So far, the editing is quite complex--apart from a few basic things in LR, I have 17 layers in Photoshop. I think I may have slightly overcooked it.

All comments welcome, save one: yes, I saw the power line.

My main comment is that this scene is all detail with no one major object really catching the eye - except that ugly red-brown "container" thing in the middle.

A lot of the details are modern-ish additions - somewhat out of sync with the Victorian-looking architecture, i.e. they are not real pretty. For example, the bright lengths of conduit here and there tend to draw the eye away from the magnificent brickwork.

My comments may be at odds with the image intentions ...

[Manfred M]

Dan - I've been looking at this image of and on for an hour or so and have come to a similar conclusion as Ted. The modern addition with the metal siding draws the viewer's attention and frankly that is probably the least attractive element in this scene.

[DanK]

Ted and Manfred,

I think you're probably right. The problem is that many of these 19th-century factories have been repurposed at various times, so it's very hard to get a capture that excludes all of that newer stuff unless you do a close-up like the windows I posted a day earlier. I went to one older factory not long ago on a planned trip and found that from the interesting viewpoint, I got a good view of a bank of Fujitsu mini-split heat pumps.

In this case, I did a lot to downplay that structure--darkening one side, lightening another, desaturating it, and darkening the vents on the near side. But given how central it is, that may not have been enough.

Thanks for the comments. In any case, the postprocessing was an interesting learning experience.

Dan

[Wavelength]

I would have opted to include more green above, avoiding part of the ground floor

[MrB]

It might just be me but, regardless of commenting on the content of the image, it looks better to my eyes when skewed slightly to the right, i.e. right side down a bit:



Philip

[Round Tuit]

Dan,
I quite like this photo. We tend to get used to looking for a main subject in a picture but I find that this one offers us plenty of wonderful details tied together by a unifying theme of decay. It works for me.

[DanK]

thanks for the comments.

Philip: I think you're definitely right, but I haven't yet figured out why, given where I was standing. I have to study this more. I'm not very good at figuring out perspective.

Andre--many thanks. It's interesting: after I wrote back to Manfred and Ted, another person looked at the image and disagreed with them. She said that the contrast between the modern structure and the decaying 19th century image makes it more interesting to her. I have to say that I am of two minds. This sort of thing happens all the time when viewing 19th century industrial buildings, but I haven't yet done much ruin porn, so I haven't thought about it enough yet.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Dan,

I hope you don't mind, but I actually had to play with it to settle on something I feel simplifies the composition, reducing it to essentially 3 depth levels and structures, with their differing ages, it enhances the old vs new theme.

I tried initially to just lose the left edge, then a bit off the right side and finally, I had to 'lose' the red door at the bottom.
It was also given a slight anticlockwise rotation.



Then I had a go at the cable:



Not perfect, just multiple sectional applications of Spot Healing tool (about 35 dabs, some using shift click, hold shift, click again, to do the straight line between the two points). View in LiteBox to switch between.

There are other extractable compositions available within original the frame as shot, but the scene, busy as it is, does us no favours.

Hope that's helpful,
Dave

[DanK]

Dave,

I don't mind at all. Au contraire.

I think it's interesting that people have very different notions of what to do with this. You and Philip even rotated the image in opposite directions! It's a very complex image, and there's room for a lot of different interpretations.

One mistake I made before posting is that early in post, I desaturated the metal container, and I didn't notice how much other later adjustments had re-saturated it. (The main culprit, I think, was the global use of the NIK filters.) So I desaturated it again. I would definitely do that with your version because your crop makes the container even more prominent.

Re the cable: I failed to get a serviceable fix with content-aware fill, even breaking the cable into small sections, but hadn't tried spot healing. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm not sure about the other two edits. The major crop on the left certainly does simplify the image, but it also gives more salience to the metal container. I'll have to stare at your version a few more times. The red door is an issue that I frankly missed, but I wonder if it might be better to desaturate it than to crop it off.

I did something with this that I almost never do until much later, and I don't know why I did it: I flattened the image at the point I posted it. So I'm limited either to adapting what's posted or going back to ground zero, and I have no record of the extensive edits I did. Very dumb.

Thanks for the comments and the edit. Much to think about.

Dan

[MrB]

Another little mystery, Dan: there appears to be a square ventilation grill in the side of the container, in which to me the "horizontal" alignment looks inconsistent compared with the top and bottom of the container.

Philip

[DanK]

Another little mystery, Dan: there appears to be a square ventilation grill in the side of the container, in which to me the "horizontal" alignment looks inconsistent compared with the top and bottom of the container.

Philip

That's the way it actually is. I'm guessing that the container was built with a roof that isn't flat and more or less parallels the old roof on which the thing was placed. The top and bottom are not perpendicular to the vertical folds in the metal, but the top of the vent is.

[Dave Humphries]

Another little mystery, Dan: there appears to be a square ventilation grill in the side of the container, in which to me the "horizontal" alignment looks inconsistent compared with the top and bottom of the container.

Yeah Philip, I looked at that and couldn't reconcile it beyond having to accept it

I briefly considered a free transform to make its top and bottom edges match the angle of the container, but no-one had mentioned it.

Hi Dan,

You and Philip even rotated the image in opposite directions!

Or we described the direction of rotation differently - e.g. I think the cropped image rotates the opposite direction to the original frame, if we consider the original frame, then I did do it clockwise. To clarify - on mine, there is a triangle that is taller at the top of the left edge. I did agonise, for a few seconds, whether I had stated it wrong, given it didn't agree with Philip, but convinced myself that what I was displaying had been rotated anti- (or counter) -clockwise.

Re the cable: I failed to get a serviceable fix with content-aware fill, even breaking the cable into small sections, but hadn't tried spot healing. Thanks for the suggestion.

These days, I mostly use spot healing say, 80% of the time*, only resorting to Clone stamp (usually) when there are sharp edges I need to preserve, or spot healing messes it up and I give that three attempts, because I believe it tries different things if you undo and repeat an attempt. Sometimes it also helps to vary the brush size up or down a notch between attempts.
* because I believe it matches edges for levels and feathering edges automatically

Cheers,
Dave

[DanK]

Dave,

Thanks for the pointer. I've used spot healing, but not much. I'll have to do more practicing with it.

Dan

[MrB]

Or we described the direction of rotation differently - e.g. I think the cropped image rotates the opposite direction to the original frame, if we consider the original frame, then I did do it clockwise. To clarify - on mine, there is a triangle that is taller at the top of the left edge. I did agonise, for a few seconds, whether I had stated it wrong, given it didn't agree with Philip, but convinced myself that what I was displaying had been rotated anti- (or counter) -clockwise.

Cheers,
Dave

Perhaps I might not have described my edit in the correct terms. When I wrote that the image looks better to me when "skewed slightly to the right", I did not mean a clockwise rotation, but rather a transformation which leaves the verticals in the image alone while pulling the right side down. Does that make sense?

Philip