A Lady In Ruins

Posted on 24/07/2011

I actually planned to upload a photo this weekend that doesn’t show a pretty female for a change. But after being urged to edit a few more pictures by Pia I’m just compelled to upload one of those.

Canon EOS60D, Tokina 12-24mm F 4, ISO200, 12mm, F8, 1/500s

 This one was shot again in the Australian House ruins (see post ‘So This Is A Shoe Advert Then’ for details) and was shot with my Tokina 12-24 mm ultra-wide angle lens. I absolutely love to shoot pictures with my Tokina, it just creates this massivily wide and detailed canvas and has a very managable distortion too. Photos are already quite brilliant at an open Aperture of F4 and it’s build like a tank, a massive lens with a very decent handling. Ah, the love for such gadgets. I will post a review at some point, but if you’re interested here as one at dpreview.com: http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/tokina_12-24_4_n15/

Back to the photo: I like that it is really this big canvas with a comparativiliy tiny figure in it. My friend René criticised me a few years ago that I always shoot things up close so maybe I’ve overcome that issue a bit now. I like Pia’s pose quite a lot too, and everything else: The location, Pia, her outfit fits nicely in that composition. And it was one of the first pics where I relied mostly on editing everything in Lightroom. I say mostly because I did the lens correction in DxO but after that it was all done in one piece of software. Since it’s interesting to do a quick before and after comparison I added a picture for that, after the break…

As you can see: It’s a bit of a difference. I adjusted the exposure and lighting levels first and then tried a few new things in detail: The duotoning Option (a really fun and powerful tool) and the ‘Verlaufsfilter’ (Yes I use Lightroom in German, the feature is called ‘Graduated Filter’ in the English version). There is this very neat book ‘Mein Lightroom Alltag’ by Hamburg based blogger Patrick ‘Paddy’ Ludolph where I got some neat ideas. I can hightly recommend the book, thing is that (as the title suggests) it is in German. Aber falls Ihr die Sprache beherrscht, here is a link to Paddy’s blog: http://neunzehn72.de/

Of course this where you also find some infos about his book and stuff. Very recommended read and I like how he writes in his very aproachable ‘MoinMoin’ style A review to his book will follow in detail after I learned a bit more from it.

What could I have done better? I’m not sure if it turned out a bit too to dark. On the other hand it helps to set the mood. Not sure. And maybe I could have done a bit more editing: A sky with perfect dark clouds would have been doable, but hey, I tend to be a bit lazy at times.

Thanks to Robert by the way for sending me that special offer link where I was able to get Lightroom for 99,- EUR instead of like 250,- You can still get it for that price at EDV Buchversand.

And it’s finally time to add one of those posed group pics of my shoot with Pia and Chris. Tata, there it is:

That’s it for today Leute. More soon.