Scott Frederick PhotoBlog

 Nikon D7000, Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5, 12mm, f/8, ISO 200

We are back!  With another round of our HDR Collaboration series.  A group of online photographers will each take turns sharing brackets from their catalogs, so that we can each have a turn at editing them.  This allows us to visualize outside of the box, sometimes bringing us into different environments than we’re used to shooting.  As well as locations, we may never see with our own eyes!

This is an exit door for the control tower of an Abandoned Power Station.   I decided to process my version as I normally do with my current workflow.  32-bit Tiff adjustments in Lightroom 4.  Also, Photoshop CS6 to correct for some distortion, add a curves adjustment, as well as apply some Tonal and Pro Contrast with, Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4.  As always, back to lightroom for some additional exposure, contrast, highlight, shadow, black point, clarity and vibrancy adjustment!

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Rob Hanson

Thanks for the great brackets, Scott!  I think it’s a testament to your setup that I found so little post-processing was necessary. The lineup was so good that I didn’t apply a crop or straightening at all. Although I ran these through Photomatix as a matter of course, I didn’t go to tonemapping, preferring instead to just take the 32-bit TIF file directly to Adobe Camera Raw.  I did a few quick adjustments there, but nothing special. Then, using Nik Color Efex Pro, I dropped in a touch of Tonal Contrast in certain areas, applied a Darken/Lighten Center to pull the eye down the hall, then fixed a bit of light bleed around one window. There might’ve been a bit of Shadowmapping in there, come to think of it.

If I were there, I don’t think I could’ve resisted the temptation to touch some of those paint flakes.

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Jacques Gudé

Huge thanks to my man Scott for these scrumptious brackets from the Richmond Power Station.  I’m always down for some URBEX goodness.  On to the fun stuff then…  I decided to get a little crazy with this one, I suppose.  Heck, I went waaaaaay off the reservation.  After running the brackets goodness through Photomatix, I tripped the light fantastic through onOne’s Perfect Effects a bit to pump up the volume, pump up the volume with some detail enhancement, and then popped back into Photoshop to get some painterly effect going.  Was that enough?  Of course not!  Instead of stopping there, I opted to focus on the lines in the shot, which I enhanced by cropping square and introducing some stomach churning, vertigo inducing twistetude!  How ya like me now, baby?

Thanks again, Scott, for dishing out the yum yums this time around for us to play with!

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Bob Lussier

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Mark Garbowski

I have noticed that especially when working on an image of an abandoned location where I have not been, I tend to want to create a path to safety. Follow this, I seem to be saying, and you just might escape. The path is a sanctuary. The beyond is weird. This image really lent itself to such an interpretation. Indeed, it could almost have the same effect without any editorial assistance, but I couldn’t resist strengthening the feeling.

Scott, thanks for sharing another great location with us.

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Jim Denham

Really appreciate Scott serving up some sweet, gritty brackets for this round and they tested me pretty well. The depth of the open hall was intriguing, but I really liked the foreground section for the peeling paint and chain fence more, so the focus was placed there. The colors didn’t do anything for me so, after tone mapping, I converted the image to black and white using onOne’s Perfect B&W and the Dramatic Light preset. It’s awfully strong, so had to tone it down a bit so some of the darker details could be drawn out.

Then it was on to Focal Point, where I did something a bit different – applied two planar focus bugs to the front two walls so that the back end of the hall was left blurred. Did some dodging and burning in Aperture then on to Photoshop Elements for a vignette using the gradient tool.

Final results were an image that had detail where I wanted it and mystery everywhere else! I really liked it! Thanks again Scott for the juicy brackets!

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Mark “Silent G” Gvazdinskas

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Mike “Theaterwiz” Criswell

Awesome, the Collab is back in action! Thanks for the great set of gritty Urbex goodness Scott. This was a sweet set to work on for sure, thanks again!

I ran these through Photomatix pro to start the fun. I then started tweaking a bit using Topaz Adjust, blended ever so carefully. When I thought I had this complete I changed my mind and added Focal Point filter, wanted to focus more on the end of the hallway, the frosted glass panels on the left perfectly leads the eyes down the hall so I wanted to mute the outer edges a bit. After Focal Point I cleaned up a bit of noise and made some slight lens corrections and a slight crop to finish it off.