New York - skyline from Brooklyn Bridge

new york - skyline from brooklyn bridge, originally uploaded by foto-art.

New York Skyline. A spur-of-the-moment iconic shot of new York from the Brooklyn Bridge. Converging verticals were corrected in Photoshop.

New York - Times Square

new york - times square, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Times Square, New York. A spur-of-the-moment shot whilst on holiday in New York. The camera was set to night mode and it is essential that one uses a tripod or some sort of ad-hoc camera rest for this kind of shot, else it will simply suffer from motion blurring due to camera shake. Such motion blurring can be quite effective....see the image 'Jazz' for example. But here I wanted a sharper image and had no tripod. In this case, any flat surface will do: a bollard, a bit of fencing, a rubbish bin, anything where the camera can be rested flat and still. This of course restricts vantage points and perspectives. Afterwards in Photoshop, converging verticals were corrected. (See tutorial on converging verticals)

Astbury Church 1

Astbury Church 1, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Astbury Church, near Congleton in South Cheshire. A slightly more unusual viewpoint of this church, which is usually photographed in the height of spring when the green in front of the church is bedecked with daffodils. This had to be taken early in the morning to get the sun on this face of the church. It was taken with a 35mm camera using a Sigma 18mm Wide angle lens and the resultant converging verticals were corrected in Photoshop. With 35mm I just take my film into somwhere like Jessop's and get them to process the film and digitise the images and put them onto a cd-rom. I do not scan prints in myself or digitise the negatives...too time consuming and expensive for the amount of 35mm photography that I do. It's just that the ultra-wide 18mm lens is indispensible for this kind of shot, where my digital camera just does not have a wide enough angle of view.

Astbury Church 2

Astbury Church 2, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Astbury Church, near Congleton, South Cheshire. One of the most photographed churches in the area. I had to get up early for this more unusual viewpoint of the church, as the sun soon moves around putting this face of the church in shade. Shot on 35mm using and 18mm wide angle lens, the resulting converging verticals were corrected in Photoshop.

FISH WEATHER VANES - Converging verticals Photoshop tutorial

fishes, originally uploaded by foto-art.

Fish weather vanes at Southport, Lancashire, England, U.K.

When taking photographs of architecture, converging verticals can be an issue, as you can see from the original small photo at the top of this post. Sometimes, you want to take a picture of a building, but you cannot get any further away from it than accross the street. This means that you have to use a wide andle lens to get the whole building in the frame, and you also have to point the camera upwards a little to get the top of the building in the frame. This creates the effect of converging verticals: where vertical lines appear to slope inwards. In olden days, professional photographers used special lenses which had a bellows extension in the the middle, so that the front elements of the lens could be angled independently of the rear elements. This expensive type of lens corrected this problem. The same correction can be made in Photoshop. Open your image in Photoshop, and draw a Marquee around the whole image using the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Click on Edit and in the drop down menu, click on copy. Click on File and on the drop down menu click on New. In the box that appears, make sure that White is selected for the background and click on OK. In this new file window, click on Edit and in the drop down menu click on Paste. Your image will appear in this new file windo as a photoshop file. Click on View and in the drop down menu, click on Zoom Out. Click on Edit and in the drop down menu click on Transform, and in the new drop down menu, click on Distort. Little boxes will appear on the corners of your image and in the centre of the sides of the image. Place the cursor on the top right hand box, click and hold while dragging the mouse to the right. This will begin to distort the image so that converging vertical lines begin to become properly vertical. Repeat the procedure on the top left hand box and drag to the left. Repeat these two procedures until you are happy with the result. If the image appears too squat or flattened, click on the box in the centre of the top edge, and drag upwards. When you are fully happy with the image, double click on the image and photoshop will perform the transform. Then click on File/Save As and the file a new name and in the format box, click on the arrow and change the image from Photoshop to JPEG. Then click on Save. The effect can be seen in the above two photos. In addition, Auto contrast was used and colour saturation was increased in the final photo.

While you are in the Transform menu, you can see what the other effects do to your image such as Skew and Perspective.