Saturday, January 24, 2009

Old Liberty Bridge

I took this photo on a trip to Liberty, Texas last Sunday. I have always thought this old bridge, which sits next to the new bridge, has a lot of character.

Title: "Old Liberty Bridge"


Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom
Post-processing: Just the highlights today as my complete workflow included a lot of steps that I didn't end up using in the final image or that just didn't have much of an impact. The main points to the image are that the work was done using Photoshop CS3. I used NIK Viveza plugin to add brightness to the shrub in the foreground and the bridge in the distance. I selected the top half of the photo and copied it to a new layer and used Transform Scale to make the bridge larger which made it appear nearer to the foreground shrub (this was done to make the image appear more as I envisioned it when I took the shot). Finally I merged all the previous work into a new layer and used Virtual Photographer plugin "Reminiscing" preset to create a B&W version that was blended with 75% opacity with a mask to keep the filter from effecting the foreground shrub and bridge. The really neat part of this work was the use of the Transform Scale function of Photoshop CS3. Without being able to re-scale it, the image wouldn't have matched my vision at all. I am including the original image below so you can see where I started.

4 comments:

Larry said...

Nice shot. I like the decision to go with the stark sky rather than the nice blue sky in your original shot. Helps give it a more stark desolate look.

Anonymous said...

Very interesting! The rescaling completely changed the impact of the bridge. Great perspective by getting so low and close to the grass. And I like the pp you have done --- the desaturation gives it more of a gritty, abandoned feeling. Including the raw image helps so much to understand your process.

Cindi

Jan Klier said...

Nice image. I love these old and forgotten structures. So much character compared to contemporary.

I like how you captured the road to bring across that this bridge is abandoned. However, the bridge structure is a bit to contrasty. I wonder if there would be a different angle where you could see more sky between individual beams? Right now it just washes into a blob of black and bright pixels.

Jan

Barry Armer said...

Thanks Larry, Cindi, and Jan!

As usual, I really appreciate your comments.

Jan - Maybe you'll like today's posting a little better, it shows a little more of the structure of the bridge.

Cheers!
Barry