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Hi everyone

Ive been fiddling with this image I took in Vegas last year, trying to capture the blur of the people but at same time draw the eye to the Versace and Cartier signs.... and add that grungey feel to the image that I am becoming a fan of. Any thoughts?



Cheers

Cathy

Cathy, great to see an image from you. You must have been either pretty busy or just lurking for awhile.

I am not a huge fan of this style of HDR, but it is an attractive image that really pushes the borders of what a photo is! The contrast of blur and sharpness is probably dulled down about due to the outrageous and surreal colours. It makes you think!

Hi Cathy

Like Cameron, I don't usually do this sort of thing but it does look good. I assume you have done an overall HDR conversion. I think what could really lift it is to go beyond this, look at the elements of the image, see what parts might work better as a normal image and what parts you might otherwise process. If the viewer is puzzled as to whether the image is real or not, it can work better.

I think the sky is too bright relative to the rest of the image. Probably it should look more like a night sky. You don't say what software you are using. If you are using Photoshop CS5, it would be relatively easy to select the sky. Then you can darken it and also remove the haloes and highlights around the edges of the building. If necessary, do it in two layers so that you can clone the sky highlights away, even into the building in the bottom layer but preserve the outline of the building using a mask on the top layer.

Alternatively, you could restore a real sky there or fade that into the surreal sky.

Your image contains lots of ghosted images of people. This is fine, it may be what you want. If you are using Photoshop CS5 or Photomatix, you can do an HDR conversion that removes ghosts. Even if you like the ghosted effect, I think it would be good to have say the orange portico on the left to have non-ghosted figures. That gives a relatively real point of reference to unreality elsewhere in the image. If you are using Photomatix, you select that area and remove ghosts. If you are using Photoshop CS5, you make two conversions and combine them using layers.

It may also help the image to remove the converging vertical perspectives. This is easy to do in Lightroom, Photoshop CS5 and CS4 (and I think CS3, I can't remember how far back the lens correction filter goes).

I think these suggestions could help your image and introduce more ambiguity, which is a good thing in this context.

If you don't understand how to do anything I have said or want more information, please ask.

Like the others, I normally don't like HDR pushed this far. But in this case, I think it suits the fantasy of the subject.

I would be inclined to make two changes if your PP skills are up to it. Mine aren't.
1. take away the obvious arc in the sky that gives away the fact that this is, in fact a ceiling, so that the fantasy element ramps up a bit more. Replace it with a rainbow perhaps. Cartier as the pot of gold at the end. Oh dear. Stop me now.
2. Make the woman in the Cartier doorway look real. Maybe even monochrome. She would really become the focus point of the image.

Which in turn make the image take on a "Stranger in a Strange Land" feel. With due apologies to Heinlein of course.

I don't mind it too much,I would at least clean up the dust bunnies in the sky and it would be nice to have some extra room on teh lower side of the image.

I think you have achieved the goal of drawing attention to the signs, that is certainly the first place my eyes go to.

Mr Darcy wrote:1. take away the obvious arc in the sky that gives away the fact that this is, in fact a ceiling, so that the fantasy element ramps up a bit more. Replace it with a rainbow perhaps. Cartier as the pot of gold at the end. Oh dear. Stop me now.

Alright, consider yourself stopped.

Talk about missing the obvious. I didn't even notice that the sky was a ceiling. That explains the highlights and "flare" above the "buildings". I was assuming they were HDR artifacts.

Another option would be to drop in a different sky and make it dark to look like a night sky. If you have the current version of Photoshop, this is not that hard at all. I can expand if requested.

You might have taken a lot of effort to produce that image or you might have just gone into a program like Photomatix or HDR Efex Pro and selected a preset. If the latter, you may be less inclined to change parts of the image but the opportunity remains....

Has an interesting 'printed on metal' kinda look. It catches the eye. I normally don't like this sortof effect but this image works quite well.

I think that the surreality of the way that you've made this image speaks precisely to Las Vegas.

Thanks again for the feedback everyone! I will continue to play with the image and see what I come up with.

I think it is very creative. It's almost
a surrealist painting.