The weather has eased a little this evening. It's not as cold, so I thought I'd do a night shoot at the main cemetery that's close to the city centre, which was surprisingly open at this late hour. It's also surprising because there's no lighting as well, so it's almost pitch black inside.
The thing about shooting in such conditions is that it's hard to see what would make a good shot, and when you think you have it's difficult to get your composition correct. Perhaps I need to scout locations whilst it's still daylight!
The sky was excellent for long exposures as the clouds were moving quickly, giving this wispy look. In some of my other shots the sky was less dramatic but clearer, so you could see some stars, which was nice. In post-processing it was difficult getting the image to look how I wanted it to; this was the closest I got and I'm still not sure about it.
By the way, I shaved off my goatee. On Monday I took a picture of it, and I thought it might be something I'd keep for a while. I quite liked it on the day, but I felt quite differently about the goatee by Wednesday and I shaved it off that morning! Periodically I try to grow a goatee, but I never end up liking it for long. I should learn.
Semi-professional photographer based in Nottingham, England, I shoot mainly events and weddings. I'll be posting my work using my Fujis - X100S and X-Pro1.
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Love this one, Vik. I like your processing a lot, with the only sticking point being the slight halo around the tombstones against the sky - it's the only thing to me that says, "This has been edited." The tones and detail are gorgeous, as always.
@vikdaddy So it's just oversharpening of the high contrast areas then? Shouldn't be too hard to fix if you use a local sharpening method instead? More time consuming though. Maybe if you drop back clarity by 25% or so and bump up the next slider in the list (vibrance)? I've struggled with haloing a few times and have ended up going bakc to SOOC and doing the whole edit in PS.... painful, when you just want to make some basic adjustments. I'm sure there is a solution, but I'm not as knowledgable of LR as I am of PS.
@jinximages Thanks for the tip, but the vibrance makes the picture extremely yellow (it's well into negative figures already). I don't really use Photoshop much; I must learn!
This shot is beautiful, it's somehow managed to subtract the misery of the subject matter and turn it into something ultimately peaceful, which is what people yearn for from a cemetery. That's inspiring.
another great night shot mate i like the suttle shadows, i was gonna get round to shooting a grave yard when i went through my phase of night shooting but i think i bottled it in the end as it was far too errie! those are big old head stones!
the yellow tone is awesome, and then you've got like this "glow" thing happpening above in the lower sky, way cool ;)
Nice one, anyway.