The White City

pm63 · Dec 5, 2008

See my flickr for large:

The capital of Jordan forms a breathtaking view from the Citadel, with limestone buildings sprawled out over hills as far as the eye can see. Originally built on just seven hills, the 'White City' now occupies fifty-six. The hazy desert atmosphere proved a nightmare photographically, producing a histogram that was a flat as a pancake and which required much bullying using levels and curves to correct.

pm63 · Dec 6, 2008

Arrrgh SOMEONE comment this photo.

Guess it's back to shooting plain sunsets with foreground interest for publicity... lol?

92sir · Dec 7, 2008

I like this shot good job!! definitely a nice view thats for sure.

DadeCountyAnthony · Dec 7, 2008

I like the shot. Great view i'll tell you that. What is distracting me is the powerline running across the image and the washed out sky.

dxqcanada · Dec 7, 2008

Crop out the sky
Crop out the bottom.

The compressed image of the buildings as a panorama will have a greater impact.

matt-l · Dec 7, 2008

dxqcanada said:
Crop out the sky
Crop out the bottom.

The compressed image of the buildings as a panorama will have a greater impact.

Leave the sky. Agree about the bottom but definitely leave the sky in there

Jeff Canes · Dec 8, 2008

I'm not sure that you can crop that much off the bottom, maybe just pass the window at the bottom, also want cutting some off the right so there is no sky between build on the right and the edge

AverageJoe · Dec 9, 2008

What about adding some polarization to it?

pm63 · Dec 10, 2008

Ahh, some comments!

I like this shot good job!! definitely a nice view thats for sure.

Thanks

I like the shot. Great view i'll tell you that. What is distracting me is the powerline running across the image and the washed out sky.

Agree about the powerline. If it was something minor I'd try to clone it out, the job is just too painstaking for me. Believe it or not, the washed out sky is as it was naturally. In Jordan, the desert air is really hazy, full of dust particles. This image was actually a post processing nightmare due to this - the histogram was flat and it took some extreme levels adjustments to get the foreground and background to acceptable levels of contrast. I tried to do something with the sky but it was just bland at time of shooting, can't really change that.

Crop out the sky
Crop out the bottom.

The compressed image of the buildings as a panorama will have a greater impact.

I tried that, but the image was lacking in foreground interest and therefore lacked depth. I thought this was stronger.

Leave the sky. Agree about the bottom but definitely leave the sky in there

Better, but same problem as above really.

I'm not sure that you can crop that much off the bottom, maybe just pass the window at the bottom, also want cutting some off the right so there is no sky between build on the right and the edge

I'm not sure, I like to keep a bit of space around the edges of an image.

What about adding some polarization to it?

How would I go about doing that in post?

AverageJoe · Dec 10, 2008

Here's my take:

I copied the image onto a new layer, applied a gaussian blur, inverted it, and then overlyed it onto the original image, then played with the levels and converted it to BW.

pm63 · Dec 10, 2008

Thanks for taking the time to do that.

There are some things I like more. The levels seem to work, especially for the background buildings. The saturation, in particular on the foreground building is wayyy over. Sky is a little excessive, but it's definitely made the image pop.

What did the gaussian bluring and overlaying achieve?