Under the Bridge

[bulldurham]

 

[Designer]

Oh, the ambiguity!

I love the ambiguity of light vs. dark areas.

Nominated for POTM, January, 2016

 

[tirediron]

Outstanding!

 

[bulldurham]

Thanks for the POTM Nomination. I am honored.

 

[jcdeboever]

That is really cool.

 

[KenC]

Nice - wouldn't change a thing.

 

[IronMaskDuval]

Amazing!

 

[xDarek]

So cool.I love that light how it is making a star!

 

[MrMikeyZ2189]

Unreal.

 

[Trever1t]

scrolling down to view it. Awesome shot and conversion. I think it'd look better by cropping out that water at the bottom, causing more focus upward

 

[bulldurham]

I've edited that shot 60 ways to Sunday and I keep coming back to this one. So, this is where it will stay for the time being but do appreciate the suggestion.

 

[weepete]

Cracking shot. If you hadn't already got a potm nomination for this I'd have given you one!

 

[Tim Tucker]

I'm going to like this because it's good, then risk derision by offering an alternate edit.

This is presented not as correct, only different.

1) I find the contrast a little too much in both the water in the foreground and the edges of the carriageways, they're too bright. I would tone it down a little.
2) You should keep the water, (but a little less of the highlights in it), but as you're counterpointing light vs dark you could crop this so the light/dark is roughly 50/50 on the concrete base in the lower foreground. This 'equality' almost broadcasts the theme because it's an exact and recognisable division. It also takes away the 'heavier dark' on the left (you have to crop the top as well) to balance the image a little better and stops your eye from escaping from under the bridge to the left.

 

[bulldurham]

I like what you've done and in print it looks far more like this than it does on the net because the net cannot seem to blend midtones worth a flip. I'll take a longer look at it later this evening and see what I can do to ease up on the contrast.

 

[Tim Tucker]

I like what you've done and in print it looks far more like this than it does on the net because the net cannot seem to blend midtones worth a flip. I'll take a longer look at it later this evening and see what I can do to ease up on the contrast.

As you already know, but repeated for any beginners, that's the difference between additive and subtractive colour systems. In your print (subtractive) the highlights and mid-tones are the light reflected off the paper base, on screen (additive) you're generating and transmitting actual light, the equivalent of shining a torch in your eyes.
A big killer of mid-tones is the clarity slider for screen based images. It's just like a mid-tones weighted wide radius un-sharp mask. A great tool for prints where the natural paper base is white and you want to stop it reflecting too much white light, but not so good for screen where the natural base colour is black. You're not only pushing mid-tone separation but you're actually removing light against a black base, it's easy to add black to a screen image but more difficult to do the same with a print. I don't use clarity for screen based images, in fact unless the shot calls for it I don't use much black at all.