Matt's Photo Essay

For my photo essay I decided on going to Bristol, a city I am not familiar with yet has such a distinguishable look to it. I believed that in such a rich urban area there would be plenty of opportunities to capture some of the beauty that attracts people to the city. I wanted to select a range of images to represent the unique aspects of Bristol, from the stencil street art to the arthecechual originality of the city skyline.

1. Water Rippling

    f/4  1/1000 s  ISO 800

I wanted to make the ripple of the water the predominant element of this photo, but as it was a cloudy day I      increased the hue of the blues in the photo so the reflection in the water would be more visible. I also increased the luminosity of the greens mainly so the concrete pathway would contrast with the grass more. 


2. The View From Brandon Hill Nature Park

    f/5  1/640 s  ISO 800

I found that when coming to edit this photo, the only thing i wanted to change was the highlights so the sky was a bit brighter. I sharpened the image as well because the raw image was a bit blurred on the main subject (the main subject being the female and the bench).  


3. The Wills Memorial Building

    f/32  1/30 s  ISO 800

For this image I increased the yellows so the Wills Memorial Building and the buildings of Park Street became less dull, my influence for doing this is many of the sandstone buildings and houses in Bath. I also reduced the blacks in the picture so the underside of the shop canopy wasn't so dark.


4. Different Coloured Housing

    f/8  1/320 s  ISO 800

I thought that in this picture it is very important to keep the colours of the housing as close to the original so didn't want to tamper with the image too much. I simply just increased the highlights to brighten the sky as it was quite dark in the raw image.


5. Father and Son

    f/5.6  1/125 s  ISO 800

For this picture I wanted to increase the autumnal look so I increased the hue of the orange to make the groups of leaves become a secondary subject of the image. I increased the luminosity of the red to give the car a brighter look and to make it more of a part of the image than just an overlooked aspect.


6. Chimneys and Glass

    f/9  1/500  ISO 800

Again, on the day of taking these pictures it was overcast so I had to recover some lightness in the sky by increasing the highlights of the image. I wanted to reduce the darkness of the dirt below the chimneys as it overtook the image. I increased the saturation of the blues and reduced the hue of the aquas so the windows would have a stronger colour.


7. Park Street Daytime

    f/4  1/1250 s  ISO 800

I quite liked how the picture turned out in the original image so felt that not much editing was needed. I increased the luminance of the magenta so the bus in the bottom left corner, the bus at the bottom of the road and the sign in the top right corner of the image had a stronger colour to it.


8. Scaffolding

    f/7.1  1/250 s  ISO 800

This image needed the dark of the wall stains to be lessened, to do this I increased the darks in parametric and brightened the image a bit. I wanted to bring out the red colour of the wall on the left of the image and the little red on one of the bags at the bottom of the scaffolding. To do this I increased the luminosity of the reds.


9. Building Contrast

    f/10  1/400 s  ISO 800

I felt that this image was more about the contrast between the contemporary building at the front of the image and the buildings behind. I felt that colour was an important factor so to build a further contrast I decided to boost up the red by making it a bit darker. To contrast with this I also increased the greens to bring out the dirty green on top of the other building to show the dating to that part of it. Subsequently, the glass of the balcony of the modern building had a green colouring to it which i decided to keep as it doesn't have a negative effect on the building.


10. Cabot Tower

    f/10  1/400 s  ISO 800

With this image of Cabot Tower I wanted to focus on colour to make different aspects of the picture stand out. The red flowers in the bottom corner and the brick work of the tower was achieved with and increase in hue of the reds and added luminosity as well. I had to reduce the luminosity down so the flowers didn't look too odd. I increased the luminosity of the trees as well to mainly give the tree on the right a better colour.


11. Water Rippling Black and White

    f/4  1/1000 s  ISO 800

 For this image I just switched it to grey scale and made the black of the image a bit less as the tree on the left had branches that I thought were too dark to go with this predominantly light image.


12. Stenciled Lamp at St George's Bristol 

    f/5.6  1/200 s  ISO 800

Like with the Wills Memorial Building, I wanted to give the building a slightly less dull colour so increased the yellow within the image. I increased the luminosity of the red as well despite there only being a minimal amount of red on the out of focus bush. I liked the over exposure of the light through the trees as the trees are really out of focus anyway.


13. Golden Unicorn

    f/10  1/640  ISO 800

For this image I wanted the unicorn to be the brightest element of this photo, but when trying to edit it I found that it was hard not to make it too bright in comparison to it's surroundings. So I increased the yellows of the luminosity to a level where i found it to still fit in with the image. I also increased the green to bring out the dirt against the grey blue roof.



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