“Night and Day (or Putting “The Thinker” to Sleep)”
Canon Mark II 1DS f 4.0 17-40MM Zoom@17mm ISO 100 f11 @1/30 with polarizer Theme Week 3: Night at the Museum
Canon Mark II 1DS f 4.0 17-40MM Zoom@17mm ISO 100 f11 @1/30 with polarizer Theme Week 3: Night at the Museum
Beautiful! I love sepia toned images. But how did you get rid of the people? Or did the museum allow you to stay after hours, lol? You say it was night? Not very late, tho, or the polarizer would have rendered the shutter speed slower. Please tell us where you focused, as you stopped down to only f/11. The left side seems slightly out of focus, but not the right side, except in the bottom corner. Must just be my eyes. A magnifying glass shows it all to be in focus. Again, tho, if I’d been there, I’d have put a person by the statue, to the left of it, looking up at it.
Flo
Hi Flo,
Thank you for being such a big supporter of Light Diary and the RV community. Yor feedback and contributions are deeply appreciated!!! Your comments are dead on. The shot (for Quiet Light Blue) that I delivered to the client (Adobe) did have a person in it and that person was me. I shot on self timer and ghosted myself walking against the wall at the very end of the shot. On “Night for Day” I seriously thought about asking the night guard to stand in the left corner against the wall behind the columns. When the clouds (fog) started pouring over the Legion Of Honor (San Francisco) I decided “The Thinker” would be enough of an anchor. I also really liked the transition of the light that happens right at the sculpture (hence the title of the shot and hence the PS treatment).
I focused this shot to infinity and on the large version of the shot everything looks pretty sharp except the near foreground which I sharpened up quite a bit in Photoshop. “Quiet Night Blue” is a straight shot on tungsten with almost no editing. “Night for Day” is a huge departure from the original. When I post the Podcast I will post the original so that people can compare. And afternoon and night at the museum is more of an accurate description of the timing of the shots but that doesn’t lead to a very fun theme title:). We were there after hours and everyone else except for me and the exterior night watchman were inside getting ready for a sit down dinner.
Thank you again Flo for all of the generosity of your shared energy. I hope we get to meet one day…..Craig
Hi, Craig – thanks so much for your generous comments.
Thanks for your explanations of the first 2 images for this week. And thanks so much for all you do for the community. I haven’t had time to explore the podcasts except for numbers 19 and 20. But I do check in for the Daily Critiques and enjoy them very much.
Yes, we’ll meet someday, as I do plan on trying to get to one of your workshops some time this year. Just gotta find the right time.
Flo
Craig, love the image!!! I like the b & w, for the future black and white images, I would like to know which channel was used, or if it is a blend, It would help me. I liked the composition, the only “perfect world” change would be to remove the air vents on the top of the left side, I wanted to talk myself into thinking about this image as being from a time when Aristotle or Socrates might have walked the marble hallway, but allas, they were without airconditioning. Thanks for the image, and nearly making time travel possible.
Hi Tim,
Thank you for being here!!! and thank you for the kind words about this image. You are absolutely right…the stuff on top should go…I might even repost the image!!!
The Podcast will give you an idea of why this stuff got left 
.
I used the red channel exclusively and then had a lot of fun in Photoshop to push this very, very far from the starting point of the red channel by itself. I started with some extreme levels adjustments which were applied locally to the right side columns and the entrance columns. The plaza tiles were almost completely dead gray so I started using seperate layers and a variety of blending modes at low opacities applied locally to the tiles to bring out the tonal changes you see there now. I was also going for an overall shift in the light from an ordinary reality to something that looked a lot more like twilight so very little was done to the columns on the left where the sun is hitting. The sky was darkened dramatically and a lot of contrast was added. If I have time I will post the PSD file to RV and post a large file for download for anyone who wants to work on this file for themselves. Thanks again Tim!!!…Craig
Gee whiz, Craig! All that work! But it did produce a wonderful image. My philosophy is that if I can’t get it right in camera, or with very little tweaking post camera, out it goes! i’d much rather be shooting than diddling at a computer.
But one of these days I plan to install the trial version of Nikon’s newest CaptureNX 1.1. We had a Nikon demo at our last camera club meeting and we were all impressed.
Sorry for the OT,
Flo
Love the image and cannot wait to see what you did in post processing. In my perfect world the statue would have a strobe on it to get a little detail but that appears difficult.
I would love to see a downloadable file for all to play.
JG
I too am enjoying the tonal arrangement of the image, as well as moment and composition. I’ve come back to this image many times and will share a reaction, in specific response to Craig’s comment about anchor. From the first viewing I could tell Craig wanted the sculpture to be an anchor, though I felt it was a little weak as the anchor and I would love to see a version where the night guard was standing just to the left of it, giving it a good look. That would enhance the anchoring effect for me…really making it an anchor. Right now I tend to skip over it pretty quick and head to other areas of contrast, despite the attempts to use shadow as a leading line to the anchor.
Craig, Terrific architectural image. I can’t say I’d change a thing except maybe taking out the destraction along the left roof line. There is a lot to look at but my eye always returns to the statue.
Murry
Craig, I like the powerful composition………there is something about the oblique angle and lines that bluntly shows the viewer how to get into the photograph. I just love using that formula. The spatial relationships and rhythms are very pleasing. The key ingredient is the light which adds a beautiful complexity, and holds the viewer. Nice work. I look forward to seeing the rest.
Craig,
Brilliant! I’m really enjoying your Light Diary. This image is particularly powerful to me. The feeling of solitude, provided by the expanse of the courtyard, takes me to a wonderful place. A place where I can be alone with my thoughts… just thinking… just like the statue. That thematic rhyme really moves me. For me, I don’t think my emotional reaction would be as great with the night watchman in the scene. I think it would take away from the solitude and introduce a tension that might completely change the image… as if I were sneaking around the plaza. Not that such a feeling would be bad… it would just change the image for me… and I really like it as it is.
As others have mentioned, the only “perfect world” improvement I would like do to this image is to remove the rooftop clutter. I’m really interested to hear why you left it in. I’m sure there was a good reason.
Regards, Brandon
Craig,
Thanks for putting this food for thought online. I’m gonna have to figure out how to deal with this day job thing. I’m inspired on a number of levels.
Before I read the comments, I found myself thinking that someone was going to appear in this image and in “Quiet Light Blue” as well. Robin Williams perhaps or maybe a tall Englishman with a bowler… Who knows?
I didn’t see the A/C stuff on the roof at first but the power of suggestion now leads my eye there. If it were my image, I’d consider removing it.
Cheers, Jim
Hi Craig — I like this black and white image entitled “Night and Day” very much. I do want to see “The Thinker” just a bit more than I can, particularly since he is the focal point at least emotionally for the image. I agree with others comments about the stuff on the roof to the left — it is distracting. Thanks for sharing with us Craig. Janet
Craig,
A very powerful image. It reminds me very much of Jerry Uelsmann’s work (although there is nothing implausible in this image). Perhaps a floating brain or something would work! (Just kidding.)
Seriously, this image is a little edgy to me (in a good way). It makes me uncomfortable, probably because there is a sense of confinement. The statue, for me, is unimportant – it’s just a prop. The walls are the main subject.
I would not remove the vents at the upper left for one simple reason: for me, they are a link to reality. Without them, the image could be a virtual creation. With them, I get the sense that the “real world” is still there. My sense of confinement is no more than a bad dream. Or maybe I’ve just looked at too many Uelsmann images! Don’t know why I’m drawn so much to his stuff; I’ve never attempted to do anything of that sort myself. But this image sure does remind me of his work.
Perhaps you do have a “dark side”, after all?
Very enjoyable but I’d like 2 improvements(in my own view) of 2 things: I’d like to see the distracting trees and structure along the roofline cloned out. Although minor they just break up the very clean image. Also, perhaps it’s the viewing of the photo at the small size or the brightness of my monitor effecting the overall look of the photo, but I’d enjoy the statue being a little bit brighter. Now, it seems just a bit too dark and shadowy, perhaps a bit of painting with light would do the trick. A little on the brighter pavers might be nice too so perhaps it’s just a minor levels adjustment(or my monitor).
Otherwise, I love everything about the photo. The compositon and shadows, contrast and lines, and especially the black and white treatment accenting the clouds…all lead the eye in and keep me enjoying the parts of the picture. That shadow stepping gently down to the statue is perfect.
For me this is a very powerful shot. Having been there a few times looking for good angles/compositions, you’ve trumped me! Mind you, doesn’t help that my shortest focal length is 18mm with a 1.6 crop factor :-p
Strong sense of isolation…fits nicely with my personal interpretation of Rodin’s idea behind the Thinker.
The environment is soooo much simplfied without other people in there. It’s quite shocking. The regimental nature of the colums actually keep me away from the statue, but not in a negative way. They cause me to keep circling it, wandering in and then back out again. I almost feel that the sky is irrelevant in this shot.
Also at first, I was a little disappointed that the statue was shaded, hoping for a ray of light to cross it, but now I’m not so sure. The more I look at this, the more I feel that the statue isn’t the main subject and that in fact, it’s more about a cage with this Thinker inside it, which leads me down the road of mental instability – people locked inside their own heads with a shadow over them, unable to reach out to the world around them…
Tony.
Hi Craig!
That’s an awesome shot … I’ve listened to the podcast about that theme before so I know a bit of the background about the shot.
I love the way you used the 17mm here and all the falling lines you’ve got from that. The subtle tone changes on the tiles are wonderful – I like how it breaks up the strict geometry of the other objects in the scene.
Your waiting for some clouds (fog) was a very good choice – cause like the tiles on the ground they bring a bit of structure to the other side of the image. How long did you have to wait?
One tiny little thing that distracts me though – there a little black spot on the left side of the image where the wall meets the sky … when I look at the statue or the bright wall behind it, my eye is moving towards that little spot.
Thanks Craig for that awesome shot and the great podcast that goes with it …
Greetings from sunny Austria … Andreas.
Super lighting and detail, also really like the tones you used.