words change everything
walk-in art @ gardens of the world in berlin-marzahn. germany.
walk-in art @ gardens of the world in berlin-marzahn. germany.
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Aug, 2015Views
369
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Awards
Winner in Light, Shadow and Shape Photo Challenge
Winner in B&W Architectural Pattern Photo Challenge
Superb Composition
Absolute Masterpiece
Peer Award
Outstanding Creativity
Magnificent Capture
Superior Skill
Top Choice
Genius
Emotions
Impressed
Categories
AlanC
September 17, 2015
Congratulations! I love this shot because its so chaotic but there is a pattern in it. Enjoyed the graphic part of this photo and it was top choice when I first saw it. After much considerations, I voted this as my personal favourite. Well done and keep it coming, my friend. :-)
JasperPhotography
September 20, 2015
Congratulations, loved the fact you had changed it to mono, hits all points of my challenge of light shadow and shape, a place in Berlin I have not visited and i will do in few weeks time.
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
I shot this photo at the "Gardens of the world" in Berlin, Germany. It´s a large complex, similar to a botanic garden and features a lot of different park variations from all around the world as well as different art projects.Time
I hadn´t really planned to shoot anything that day. It was a very hot summer day in Berlin and I just wanted to get out, enjoy the fine weather and maybe find some cool place to shoot.Lighting
the light was quite strong that day. I think I took the photo right around noon or shortly after. Usually not the best light for photos but for this image it worked quite well because it gave me these great contrasts and shadows.Equipment
I only had my Camera with me that day without any extra stuff. I primarily shoot with a Nikon D7100 which is a great cam. Not too heavy but with almost all the features a pro body has. The lens was a Sigma 18-35mm 1.8G Art, which I use almost all the time because it´s amazingly sharp, even wide open and has very low distortion or other negative effects.Inspiration
I had been to these gardens several times before but never saw this particular art installation. As soon as I entered it, I noticed the interesting play between light and shadow and I was amazed by how the sun formed these endless streams of words on the ground. I knew I wanted to capture an image which would reflect all this.Editing
I only shoot raw. always. So I have to process any image I want to use. I mainly use Adobe Camera Raw (which is like the Lightroom Development tool) and do some additional stuff in Adobe Photoshop CS6. For this image I played around with the white balanced to get a warm, contrasty look. The color version is a deep golden with some dark blue in the sky. I knew beforehand that this image was going to be black and white. So what I normally do then, is to get a strong contrasty image with great differences between light and dark. To achieve that I play around with the whites and shadow tabs as well as the Curves tool in ACR. For almost all my images I add a small vignette to keep the eye on the center of the image. I usually do a -10 with 50 to 70 feather. After ACR I loaded the image as a smart object ( always use this as it allows you to switch back to ACR later and do some fine tuning) into photoshop and used Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 for the black and white conversion. I don´t use any particular preset. Just play around a bit and pick the one that suits the image best. Sometimes I combine different versions for different parts of the image. And that´s really all there is. I rarely do any sharpening or noise reduction at the end. I tend to use the standard settings in ACR and they often yield perfect results for me.In my camera bag
I try to keep it light. I have a Nikon D7100 and D7000. The D7100 uses the Sigma 18-35mm 1.8 Art lens and the D7000 the Nikkor 50mm 1.8G. Thats usually all the focal lenght I need and I love fast lenses like these two. I´m not someone who uses a lot of lenses as I don´t like lens switching. With both these lenses I know how the image will look like before taking a shot. It´s always good to really know the Ins and Outs of your lens and what they´re good at. Additionally I use a Polarizer from B&W and a Neutral Density 10 Filter from Lee Filters (big stopper). I have a cable remote for my long exposures and a standard tripod for around 200 bucks. The tripod I want to upgrade and everything else is really all I need.Feedback
What i usually try to do is scout an area you want to shoot in advance. Either by checking it out a day before or during the day if you want to do nightphotography or via the internet. Every place has been shot a hundred times before so I scan some images here or on flickr or 500px and find some locations which might be interesting. I also use a smartphone App (photo pills) which is really great as it gives you a lot of information for everything you need when doing a photo session. And I think what really took my images to a new level (compared to how they looked before) is trying to get better in postprocessing. And by that i don´t mean to use fancy filters or pump up the colors but learning the tools to really enhance your vision of an image. I never knew about blending different photos and using masks correctly. I´m a big fan of Joshua Cripps and how he edits his pictures. He has a youtube channel with free and very easy to understand tutorials. So I can recommend anyone who wants to get better at Photoshop or Lightroom to check him out. It will really help your photos.
