Seating and the Bay Bridge
Posted on 17 October 2006
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.
7 responses to Seating and the Bay Bridge
Great image!! This looks like something taken way back with an old TLR. Fantastic! (I love the noise!!)
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!
Whats this image like in Color? cropped to your specified specs, but in color…. i’ve feeling it might be just as interesting..
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.
My apologies for the spelling. Been at work for nearly 11 hours and I just had a very large latte.
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!
Fantastic perspective and I love the graininess. I’ll have to try this effect myself.