1858 - Flags And Banners


On the train to Carinthia. 6 pm and outside it’s darkest night. Here are two Urban Dreams captured in the morning.

Both of these images wouldn’t have been possible with a small-sensor camera like the Panasonic LX5. The image on the left was of a reflection, taken at f1.4 and with the focus somewhere in the weird lines of the reflection. In post-processing I’ve equalized the tones (the left side was much darker), pushed colors and partially contrast, but nothing of that is regarded as particularly non-photographic.

The Image of the Day is almost completely a result of Photoshop work. I took an image of an advertising poster with extremely shallow DOF and played around with it, pretty aimless, until I had the idea with the stripes, and from there it became a flag, a turmoil, something burning, a window into a world of warring nations. In the end I liked the result better than the straight photograph, and this is how it ended up as Image of the Day.

The Song of the Day is “Flags And Banners” from the 1973 Faces album “Ooh La La”. Beautiful song. Hear it on YouTube.