Norse statue in Dresden

[Andrew_Dunbar]

I spent a four days in Dresden last October. After walking around for a few days I decided to photograph this scene during blue hour. I loved the juxtaposition of the the church dome, the buildings, and the statue in the foreground. I wanted to catch some light bursts off the street lights. I arrived at the location at around 5:30 in the morning. Unfortunately that was at the same time the bakery delivery trucks came and one was parked in front of the building at the end of the street. By the time the truck left the sun was fairly high in the sky. I took a few exposure brackets, but didn’t like the way it turned out in post processing. I decided to go with black and white instead. I printed it on Fotospeed A3 Platinum Barayta and was very happy with the results.

Type of Critique Requested

• Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
• Conceptual: Feedback on the message and story conveyed by the image.
• Emotional: Feedback on the emotional impact and artistic value of the image.
• Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

I played around with the cropping a little bit and adjusted the angle. I wanted to leave a bit more headroom at the top of the statue but I just didn’t like the way it looked. I shot this at F11 because I was standing fairly close to the statue and wanted the it and the church dome to be as sharp as possible. Looking at later, the building on the left looks a bit softer than I would like.

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Technical Details

I shot this on an EOS RP, RF 28-70
ISO 200
57mm
f11
1/60
I lowered the highlights, lifted the shadows, and increased the black in the sky a bit in LRC.
I adjusted the crop in LRC
I dodged and burned using luminosity masks in PS.
I increased the sharpness of the cobblestones, the buildings, and the statue using a high pass filter.

[David_Bostock]

Hi Andrew, terrific composition here. And I like the B&W treatment, The positioning of the statue is a nice touch too. My eye keeps moving back and forth.

I do notice a significant halo around the buildings/statue and the sky. Probably from the Highlights/Shadows tools. It’s most evident in the small thumbnail image, but also visible in the larger version. There are some easy ways to deal with the halos, feel free to do a search.

So glad the print turned out well for you.

Cheers,
David

[Andrew_Dunbar]

Hey David!

Thanks for the feedback! I hadn’t even noticed the halo until you pointed it out. I will address that.

Thanks,

Andrew

[Merv (Mervin Rosenquist)]

Hi Andrew,

This is really nice!
B&W is fast becoming one of my favorite genre of images, especially with historic cities like Dresden.
I’ve never been but I am a big WWII history buff.

I read about this statue and I believe it’s George Gate at the entrance to the Dresden Palace? “Georgentor”? and if memory serves, there’s one on each side of the entrance. (16th or 17th century?)

I like the way you have this framed because it makes the statue seem bigger than it really is, it has a nice Guardian Presence to it in this scene.

I like the B&W treatment and the mood is fitting along with the cloudy sky.

I agree with @David_Bostock about the halo he mentioned and there is a good video that describes an easy way to fix that sort of thing. Cloning out Halos the Easy Way (Link)

There’s also another easy tool for bringing those vertical lines in architecture images back to vertical using Edit>Transform>Perspective in Ps. Most lenses will cause some distortion in architectural images so it’s nothing to do with how it was shot.
And to make that easier, you can go to View>Rulers, and you can drag a guide from the top and/or side ruler bar to help with straightening, then drag them away when you’re done.

Personally, I think you could use a dodge mask in Ps and brush in some dodging on the statue to make him stand out more “if that’s appealing to you”.

Your image is pretty sharp all the way through so congrats on hitting the focus and the use of f11.
To help it out you could go to Filter>Camera Raw Filter and use the Texture and Clarity sliders globally, just bump them up a tad like +7 or so on each.

I did a quick edit showing the straightening, the halo fix and a little more dodging on the statue just for the heck of it.
Use what parts you like

You can also play around with adding a bit of tint in the B&W adjustment panel if you like, it can produce some nice mood setting results if that’s something you might be interested in for this or future images.

Edit without warming tint

Edit with slight warming tint.

Anyway, glad to see you posting

[Andrew_Dunbar]

Hey Merv!
Thanks for the helpful feedback and sorry for the very delayed reply. I have been on the road for work. I will watch the video you sent and update you on the result.
Thanks Again,
Andrew

[Merv (Mervin Rosenquist)]

No worries, Andrew

You’re welcome.

Just glad to have you back and I hope you’re doing well.

Thanks for the response.

[Andrew_Dunbar]

So I took you guys’ advice. I addressed the halo and warmed it up to +7. Please tell me what you think about the result.
Thanks,
Andrew

[Merv (Mervin Rosenquist)]

Hi Andrew,

The work you did on the halo was well done, it’s much better now.
I also like the tonal ranges.

And I still like the composition with the Georgentor statue guarding the gate, it’s presence in the frame is well balanced.

The halo treatment and tones look good to me.