This image was first done May on a trip to Montsalvat at an Artist Retreat in Eltham, not far from me.  This is the Great Hall.  This image isn’t bad, but I was never really happy with the greyness in the window.  I do like the setting and thought I would use it today to redo.

The view out the window is certainly much better in this.  I did reprocess the HDR in Photomatix Pro. I have gotten very used to how that software works and what I can do with it.  I then did some processing with Topaz Adjust 5, really just added some detail, which has made the image more textural. Well, I think it has.  This image was a lot more saturated so I desaturated it a bit.  The image was darkened and the table and floor were lightened so your eye would be drawn to the window and outside.

There are aspects of both that I like.  The first one shows more of the room, whereas the second one has more atmosphere.  One is an architectural shot and the other more an art image.

I also had to attempt doing it in Silver Efex.

This is probably the best of the first two.  There are lots of textures, but you also see the room.

As I said yesterday, I went into the city.  I went in to photograph the Manchester Unity Building.  It wasn’t great as the weather was horrible, which meant that I couldn’t really photograph the tower.  I did get some images and I will play with them, but I will have to go back another time.  We were thinking the morning would be better.  I will start putting up some photos on Sunday.

A Touch of Christmas

So many of you are putting up images of Christmas and I thought I would do the same today.  I didn’t really get many Christmas images, only one really.  The weather was so bad, I just wanted to come home.

I remember my friend 1000 had a window from Tiffany’s and when I was walking near Tiffany’s in the city, I had to look at the window.  I got my camera out and took a couple of photos, then it started raining again, so I had to get a move on.

A touch of Christmas in Melbourne.  I hope you like it.  We finally put up our tree today.  It is big and it is the first time we have had the big tree up for years.  I forgot about all the beautiful decorations we got the Christmas we spent in Denmark.  It is lovely to see them out again.  I will, of course, take photos of them for you.