Photos

During my visit to North Korea, I was hoping to get some pictures of some North Korean soldiers – but my guides only frowned when I suggested the idea. However, I had a brief photo opportunity (of sorts) when I was at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace which I mentioned in my note to the photograph that I posted yesterday. We were standing near the gate to the Palace – which is a massive gate made of granite and copper – when three soldiers walked up to the gate and posed for a photograph being taken by another soldier. I immediately snapped a couple of wide shots – which my guides didn’t seem to mind – and from that I have tried to make a composition focusing on the soldiers.

The original from which I cropped this was quite underexposed (I had the camera on auto exposure and the very bright light and reflections off the granite, together with the polarizing filter that I had on the lens, seems to have fooled the meter) and it was very contrasty. I have posted the original to the workshop so you can see what I mean. From this pretty awful original, after correcting the tilt and cropping it heavily, I played around with the levels and contrast, but couldn’t get the soldiers to look much more than silhouettes without losing all the saturation in the picture. So I used the PS magic wand to play around with the levels further on the soldiers and reduce the black output, then used the healing brush to adjust the patchiness that was created on the soldiers tunics and faces by the levels adjustments that I made within the area outlined with the magic wand. There is probably a much easier way to do that using layers, but I haven’t taught myself how to use layers yet, so this was the best I could do with my relatively limited PS knowledge.

I have also posted the other wide shot that I took in the workshop so that you can see what the gate looked like as a whole, but I was more interested in focusing on the soldiers than I was on the gate.

PS: After I uploaded this I decided I still wasn't happy with it and realised I hadn't spent enough time on PP to make it really work. As Rafal pointed out in his critique, it is 'flat' because there is not enough contrast. Rafal's WS improves it, but the WS is a bit too 'contrasty' for my personal taste. I've been playing around with the contrast and saturation a bit more, and have come up with a version that I think is an acceptable compromise between my original and Rafal's workshop. I will upload it as a repost later today.