Seating and the Bay Bridge

Public seating near the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.

I shot this on the first evening after getting to the city. Matt, Andy and I went for a walk down the street and I got my first sight of downtown San Francisco.

Technique: I cropped the photo to a 1×1 ratio, converted to black and white, duplicated the background layer. Set the mode of the top layer to Overlay and added noise via Filters->Noise->Scatter RGB. I adjusted the noise effect by changing the opacity of that layer.
One thing to note - when you resize an image you’ll have to add noise again because the pixels are softened up by the resize procedure.

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7 responses to “Seating and the Bay Bridge”

  1. #1. Flickr: Traces in the Sand on October 17th, 2006 at 8:45 am

    Fantastic perspective and I love the graininess. I’ll have to try this effect myself.

  2. #2. micki on October 17th, 2006 at 10:31 am

    Great image!! This looks like something taken way back with an old TLR. Fantastic! (I love the noise!!)

  3. #3. Donncha on October 17th, 2006 at 3:44 pm

    Glad you like it! adding noise was an experiment for me becaue it’s something I haven’t done before. I must try it again when appropriate!

  4. #4. joe on October 17th, 2006 at 4:56 pm

    Whats this image like in Color? cropped to your specified specs, but in color…. i’ve feeling it might be just as interesting..

  5. #5. ABM on October 18th, 2006 at 12:20 am

    Why did you addd the noise? I am crious.

    I really like the lines of the bridge and the curve of the chairs. In a way, it makes the image easy to view - pathways adn such.

  6. #6. ABM on October 18th, 2006 at 12:21 am

    My apologies for the spelling. Been at work for nearly 11 hours and I just had a very large latte. :|

  7. #7. Donncha on October 18th, 2006 at 12:36 am

    ABM … get thee away from the keyboard right now! You’ll do yourself harm!

    I added the noise as an experiment and I liked the feel of the image after it. I’ve tried the same with other images and it didn’t suit so it’s not for all. I found the technique in a camera magazine with instructions for Photoshop, but they translated easily to the GIMP.

    Colour? Unfortunately the sky isn’t great. There is a sunset, but it’s behind me and the sky was sort of blown out and not very blue. A polariser wouldn’t have helpd much here either because the sun was 180 degrees to the plane of the photo, not that I have a 77mm filter anyway!

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