Stepping out of the crowd

Written January 4, 2007 in Abstract, Black and White, Candid, Canon 20D, Cork, Ireland, People, Photos, Sigma 10-20, St Patrick's Street, Street, Urban

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A girl steps away from the maddening crowd on a busy street.

This was a bit of an experiment for me. I blurred the background by making a duplicate layer, blurring, adding a layer mask and then revealing the girl through the layer mask. It’s not perfect, and in fact, the closer I look the more imperfections I see. Unfortunately I never saved a .xcf file preserving the layers so this is the final product.

I like it. The blur successfully separates the girl from the backgrond and even the zone of sharpness takes in some of the ground around her which exaggerates the effect!

Taken on St. Patrick Street, Cork last October.

User tags: "michael czeiszperger"

3 comments on ' Stepping out of the crowd '

I like the outcome

Written by Flickr: EDigi on January 04, 2007 at 2:58am
I think your experiment worked very well. The Photoblogger “Mute” does this all of the time, although with big things like buses, and not people.

The other thing you can use is Photoshop CS2 has a lens blur feature which does a very realistic job of simulating lenses, so in this case you could experiment and see what it would have looked like if taken with a wider aperture.

Written by Michael Czeiszperger on January 04, 2007 at 3:16pm
Thanks Michael. I went searching and found a few things: fake tilt-shift lens and the Focus Blur plugin for the GIMP might be similar to the lens blur plugin. I may try that out later!

Written by Donncha on January 04, 2007 at 8:49pm