Box And Pipe Version 2

In keeping with getting the shot quickly into the camera before things change, I made the picture posted on the weekend, but I also then stopped to think about what I was doing. I decided to include more of the curve in the upper left, while at the same time exposing only the lid of the box. Moving back a few inches and adjusting the zoom allowed for what I think is a better composition. Again, Helicon Focus is used for near infinite depth of field, and this time I was careful to consider the framing with the closest focus as the image is slightly magnified (ie. cropped) which means that if you do your framing with the distant part of the image in focus, you may get the framing wrong.

I took advantage of the colour sliders in the black and white conversion layer in photoshop to give the grass just the right tint through adjusting the yellow and green sliders while slightly darkening the beige box by darkening the red slider, none of which affected the relatively neutral concrete. Considerable work was done with curves adjustment layers to get the tonalities right (some 10 layers of adjustment), as well as subtle highlight dodging near the end of the workflow - just as I wrote about in my second book.

I have just realized that the bottom corner of the grass looks a little weak - so before I make my first print, I'll darken that (but have left the problem here for you to see the kind of thing that I adjust to make a good print).