Eiffel Painter Photo

Photographer’s Note

I took this shot on the first floor of the tower. I am pretty sure this guy is painting the tower because he has a bucket with paint drippings of the same color as the tower. The brush is rather weird, however, and almost looks like a socket wrench on the end - plus he has it on top of a bolt/rivet.

Also I think this guy might be fake. He didn't move the entire time I was staring at him. Maybe a wax sculpture? If anyone has any info, please share.

Postprocessing on this shot was a lot of work. I aligned myself in such a way when I took the shot to block out the sun with the steel structure. Doing this, however, caused an almost silhouette effect of the man and the structure, plus the sky look washed out. To correct all of this I made several layer copies and adjusted the levels for the different elements of the image individually; one for the sky, one for the steel and 2 for the man. Then I used layer masks to paint out unwanted parts of each layer to end up with this.
Here is the original before postprocessing.

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Critiques | Translate

nwoehnl (120) 2004-05-22 15:15

Such a good shot, so much effort in post-work, and no critique yet? I'd like to drop a few words. Like you, I'm not sure either whether the guy is a sculpture; he looks slightly unreal. I like a lot how he is engulfed between those different shapes and lines of the Eiffel tower, and how the glass windows on the left reflect some of the parts of the tower. I think your post-pro, painful as it may have been, turned out really good on this one. Thanks for sharing it, Michele.

The guy may be fake or not, I'm adding this shot into Yitzhak's "Men at work" theme ;-)

voodoo (77) 2004-10-07 5:20