What Is That?
When I show this picture to people they say "What is that?" It doesn't resemble anything familiar, although I am sure that some people reading this will recognize it immediately. It is viewed daily by hundreds of thousands of people, but not quite the way I have depicted it. This picture story is about creating something puzzling from something already unusual.
f3.5 at 1/800 0 eV 72 mm (432 mm equivalent) 2112 x 2816 Canon S3
Essence: The original picture above was taken out of the window at Terminal 3, Heathrow airport while waiting for a plane. It is the supporting column of the control tower. Here is the whole thing:
I did not know what I was going to do with the close-up picture that I took. It looks unusual and has some unique features.
Accident: The missing cover that appears in the picture, the red light that sticks oddly out, and the little vanes that I presume are there to break up the airflow all combine to make a collection of unfamiliar objects. The wires are apparently disconnected too. There is no detail in the background either.
Vanity: So I made it odder still. First I flipped it upside down and used Straighten to make one side of the tower vertical with an angle of 1.4 degrees. Then I jacked the Contrast up to 0.25 and the Saturation to 1.3 to enhance the rather washed out look and make the red light glow. I adjusted the levels, dragging the W slider down to 0.83 to brighten the dull image.
Cropping was next, taking the original down to 1609 x 1205 by selecting a piece from the bottom. And then I played with the new color controls in Aperture 1.5 to achieve the weird tints. The final settings looked like this (the other colors were left alone):
I made the blue much more red to get the purple look and boosted the saturation of a wide range of greens. The noise in the image caused the two colors to dither and posterize in some areas.
Final Image:
100% crop:
f3.5 at 1/800 0 eV 72 mm (432 mm equivalent) 2112 x 2816 Canon S3
Essence: The original picture above was taken out of the window at Terminal 3, Heathrow airport while waiting for a plane. It is the supporting column of the control tower. Here is the whole thing:
I did not know what I was going to do with the close-up picture that I took. It looks unusual and has some unique features.
Accident: The missing cover that appears in the picture, the red light that sticks oddly out, and the little vanes that I presume are there to break up the airflow all combine to make a collection of unfamiliar objects. The wires are apparently disconnected too. There is no detail in the background either.
Vanity: So I made it odder still. First I flipped it upside down and used Straighten to make one side of the tower vertical with an angle of 1.4 degrees. Then I jacked the Contrast up to 0.25 and the Saturation to 1.3 to enhance the rather washed out look and make the red light glow. I adjusted the levels, dragging the W slider down to 0.83 to brighten the dull image.
Cropping was next, taking the original down to 1609 x 1205 by selecting a piece from the bottom. And then I played with the new color controls in Aperture 1.5 to achieve the weird tints. The final settings looked like this (the other colors were left alone):
I made the blue much more red to get the purple look and boosted the saturation of a wide range of greens. The noise in the image caused the two colors to dither and posterize in some areas.
Final Image:
100% crop:
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