1158 - Sophisticated Lady

Vienna. An image taken at 5:08pm. And there is hope: It’s less than a week, and then the days will begin to get longer again. Slowly at least πŸ™‚

So far it is just getting colder. I took this image of a mannequin outside a shop in Vienna’s 7th district. I have completely re-lit the image, and actually I am pretty pleased with the result. Click on the thumbnail and compare the JPEG from the camera with my version.

This was just one possible way to go. It’s always like that and this is the nice thing with digital post-production: you have a chance to completely change the image after the capture. I could have achieved a very similar result with flash, but that would have meant off-camera flash, probably a remote trigger, things that I have (flashes, not triggers), but that I found tedious to haul around.

It’s not that much easier this way, maybe much to the contrary. I suppose it is easier to learn lighting such a scene with flashes, than it is to learn how to achieve it in Photoshop (and you still need a decent exposure to begin with), but I like pondering about images, studying them, and when I’ve made up my mind, creating the image according to my vision. And all this happens in the comfort of my warm apartment. Probably that’s the real progress πŸ˜„

The Song of the Day is “Sophisticated Lady” (this time really a Duke Ellington composition πŸ™‚), sung by Ella Fitzgerald in her 1958 “Birthday Concert” in Rome, Italy. That’s a great record. I mean, I like her, even in her most commercial studio albums, but Ella live on stage, that was a very different thing. Just hear for yourself on YouTube.


There are 5 comments

Ove   (2009-12-15)

Nice! You could say that you used a digital umbrella and fill flash. You really have to have lots of colour information in the shadows to be able to do this. The result reveals you had that. Very nice. Only one week left until it turns, light-wise. I have never understood why its not as coldest now but not until in another two months.

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Esther Emma   (2009-12-16)

always love before and afters and you did good i can even say profesionally completely natural look and feel as a result always interested how you did it in which programme and what technic many ways lead to rome (in this case to vienna πŸ™‚ = And all this happens in the comfort of my warm apartment = well, that's my deal. no tedious hauling around for me, but pondering about images, studying them, and when made up my mind, creating the image according to my vision. we *do* have a lot in coomon, andreas πŸ™‚ have a nice day, andreas (they expect heaps of snow here, down in the 'lowlands' πŸ™‚ )

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Flo   (2009-12-16)

Andreas, you made a lovely image even more lovely! I too would love to know which software you used - perhaps a combination of two or more. What strikes me most is how those lights in the distance look so much like pearls that could be a necklace that any woman would be happy to wear. It's like the mannequin has hung up her pearls in favor of what she was wearing when you made the image. Or perhaps a store just dangled the pearls outside to entice people to stop, admire and go inside to buy something.

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Gina   (2009-12-17)

lovely ... i really like the images .. i must say i do prefer the original one ... i can see how the extra lighting is appealing but i like the darkness in the original forcing my eye to disover all the loveliness in the image ... which is all there ... really really nice >> Gina

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1159 – I Can’t See Your Face In My Mind | Photographer’s Blog   (2009-12-18)

[...] Emma and Flo asked me how I did the post-processing in β€œ1158 – Sophisticated Ladyβ€œ. Well, here we [...]

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