Ironbridge Power Station
- Thread starter Carlh
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- Steve (Being Kind)
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I am not sure I like this BW shot, I think that the color in the trees would contrast well with the grey of the cooling towers. The sky is a tad overdone also, for my tastes anyway. I like the composition the way the power station seems to sit in the surrounding hills.
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- Rob Telford
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The composition is fine and I like the contrast between the trees and the concrete.
However, talking of contrast, I think there's some wonderful light and shade in here that's been somewhat mashed up by rather over-eager use of HDR or the shadow and highlight sliders. The tonal range has been flattened far too much, IMO. Those great shadows on the cooling towers ought to be punchy and dramatic.
As the OP has allowed edits, I had a quick play with it in Photoshop and I think there's a much better image in there, though as Steve mentioned, the sky is a bit overdone, which I haven't really addressed.
On a side note, the shot does remind me of when I was about ten or a little older (circa 1977-82) and we spent a few days of quite a number of holidays at a camping site at Buildwas, quite close to the power station. The power lines passed over the field, making the air crackle and IIRC, it even caused some fluorescent tubes to glow on their own.
They had an open day at the power station while we were visiting one year and we got a great tour of the place - very impressive turbines.
There's a nice little bridge by Thomas Telford just upstream as well.
However, talking of contrast, I think there's some wonderful light and shade in here that's been somewhat mashed up by rather over-eager use of HDR or the shadow and highlight sliders. The tonal range has been flattened far too much, IMO. Those great shadows on the cooling towers ought to be punchy and dramatic.
As the OP has allowed edits, I had a quick play with it in Photoshop and I think there's a much better image in there, though as Steve mentioned, the sky is a bit overdone, which I haven't really addressed.
On a side note, the shot does remind me of when I was about ten or a little older (circa 1977-82) and we spent a few days of quite a number of holidays at a camping site at Buildwas, quite close to the power station. The power lines passed over the field, making the air crackle and IIRC, it even caused some fluorescent tubes to glow on their own.
They had an open day at the power station while we were visiting one year and we got a great tour of the place - very impressive turbines.
There's a nice little bridge by Thomas Telford just upstream as well.
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Thanks for the comments guys, they've been REALLY useful, so Ive gone and taken on board what you have suggested and the results are below.
The image was PP'd on ACR then I used Efex Silver and one of the presets and whacked up the structure value. Silver Efex uses tone mapping so I guess thats where the weird stuff came from. Ive refrained from using SEfex on the re-work and just used simple tools from PP.
I didnt plan the position of the shot - as soon as I saw it, I thought thats great. Getting anywhere near that place is a nightmare but from this street, its perfect
The first image is the colour image, pretty much straight from the camera, I have bumped up the contrast via ACR on PP loadup, a little to get the colour version popping. Then I used one level of unsharpen mask and that was the colour version.
The B&W conversion is desaturate, then bumped down the brightness, put up the contrast.
No tone mapping this time, so there shouldnt be any halo or weird artifacts.
I did crop the B&W version as there was a rather large dust bunny at the very top of the sky. I might crop the colour if its good enough
Rob - I had heard of the glowing lights lol. Thats for the edit, it is better than my first attempt, hopefully this rework is much better and not OTT on the processing.
The image was PP'd on ACR then I used Efex Silver and one of the presets and whacked up the structure value. Silver Efex uses tone mapping so I guess thats where the weird stuff came from. Ive refrained from using SEfex on the re-work and just used simple tools from PP.
I didnt plan the position of the shot - as soon as I saw it, I thought thats great. Getting anywhere near that place is a nightmare but from this street, its perfect
The first image is the colour image, pretty much straight from the camera, I have bumped up the contrast via ACR on PP loadup, a little to get the colour version popping. Then I used one level of unsharpen mask and that was the colour version.
The B&W conversion is desaturate, then bumped down the brightness, put up the contrast.
No tone mapping this time, so there shouldnt be any halo or weird artifacts.
I did crop the B&W version as there was a rather large dust bunny at the very top of the sky. I might crop the colour if its good enough
Rob - I had heard of the glowing lights lol. Thats for the edit, it is better than my first attempt, hopefully this rework is much better and not OTT on the processing.
OP
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hi phil, yes, its in Ironbridge itself, though to get this view you need to literally park in a busy street and hope no one is driving around... I was lucky, got there early in the morning.
The main part with Ironbridge is fine, you'll spend probably 30 mins taking photos but then it gets a bit sparse on things to photograph....
Whereabouts you coming from phil? If you dont know the area well, I could point you in some directions. i.e. severn valley steam railway aint far, the shropshire canal is local(ish) too.
The main part with Ironbridge is fine, you'll spend probably 30 mins taking photos but then it gets a bit sparse on things to photograph....
Whereabouts you coming from phil? If you dont know the area well, I could point you in some directions. i.e. severn valley steam railway aint far, the shropshire canal is local(ish) too.