Saturday, February 13, 2010

Little Flower

Taken last Sunday as we happened to be in San Antonio, Texas. This church is visible from the freeway (I-10 I think) near downtown and the architecture caught my eye and called me back to it later in the day for a brief photo session. The church is actually called "Basilica for the National Shrine of the Little Flower" so I felt shortening the name of the post to "Little Flower" would be understandable. :-)

Title: "Little Flower" (rollover)


Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 24-105mm L zoom
Post-processing: Photomatix Pro to combine three tripod based exposures (-2, 0, +2) into one HDR (High Dynamic Range) image > Photoshop CS4 > Topaz Adjust plugin > aslo used two textures from FlypaperTextures.com

4 comments:

Brian Bastinelli said...

Barry I like this image a lot for a few reasons.

FIrst I like the warm and cool colors and the harmony between them. There are really nice soft transitions and it creates a peaceful feeling which goes along with the subject.

Secondly I like the texture because it reminds me of what you might see on the walls on the inside of this building.

Nice job!

Cindi said...

This shot has such nice, soft light, and I love the crackelure texture (are the textures you are using from Flypaper textures?). There are some really interesting repeating elements at the top of the church --- the railings, the columns, the slats in the arches, the roof tiles...is there any way to get higher across from it, straight on? Where's a hot air balloon when you need one? Or maybe that would show some unwanted background clutter...

Larry said...

Nice shot. I think the addition of the texture improved a good composition by 100%.

Barry Armer said...

Thanks Brian, Cindi and Larry!

Cindi - Yes, these are textures I purchased from Flypapertextures.com (I highly recommend them for anyone who doesn't want to spend a lot of time creating their own set of textures). The Church is located in a non-picturesque neighborhood surrounded by 615,000 different power lines. I chose to photograph an upper detail of the Church because I knew it would require extensive post-processing work in order to get a usable image that included the street level.

Cheers!
Barry