Antananarivo Photo

Photographer’s Note

Not the best photograph I have ever taken: it was taken with my trusty Olympus OM1N on negative colour film but I rather suspect that either the film was old or was of poor quality: I seem to remember it was not a well-known make.

This was taken from our hotel window in the centre of Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, in 2001 when I was there with my daughter who was involved in research into primates and, in particular, lemurs which are endemic and peculiar to Madagascar.

Madagascar is the eleventh poorest country in the World and that is very evident when you visit Antananarivo, or Tananarive, or Tana, as it is now more usually known.

Madagascar was a French colony until its independence in 1960 and the capital city has in its centre fine streets and buildings which have now sadly fallen into a dreadful state of repair: roads are full of potholes and cracks and buildings are crumbling into terrible and dangerous states of disrepair. Here you can see roofs, previously clad with slates and tiles, repaired haphazardly with patches of rusting corrugated iron.

Nonetheless, a wonderful city in a wonderful country.

rjb874, graffer, saxo042, matt_harris_42 has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

saxo042 (16266) 2008-02-24 8:37

Hi John,
I like this composition, which reminds me of some cubistic painting. The colour scale is very much limited to the one brownish colour you have also chosen for the frame.
Greetings from Gothenburg
Gunnar

graffer (1764) 2008-02-24 8:45

Hello John,

Well, I don't quite know what to say about this one. It seems to have a reddish-brown tinge throughout - perhaps a different frame colour might have helped lift it a bit.

I don't know what PP you've done on the image - the composition is good but it does seem very flat and lacks impact.

I thought I might try a WS, but I wasn't very pleased with the results. Perhaps I'll post it anyway.

The following may already be old hat to you, but I thought I'd post it - it might be helpful to others.

The first thing I try with a flat - or for that matter any image I'm PPing - is to look at the levels [CTRL-L]in PS, which as I'm sure you know brings up the histogram. Very often just clicking on AUTO brings about a marked change.

If that doesn't work I set the black and white points with the pipettes. Sometimes I set the grey too, but it's not always easy to find a grey point. I sometimes fiddle about with the sliders too.

Does your PSE 6 have Curves? This is what I look at next - using that free PSE plug-in I am sure I've mentioned before - if the previous stages haven't done the trick. I never use the brightness and contrast adjustments now - I find I can do it all with levels and curves.

When I've finished with levels and curves in PSE, I save the picture at full size - go to FastStone and;
Adjust the RGB levels if necessary
Adjust Saturation - usually slightly overdo this
Resize to 700 pixels
Save as near 200kb as possible
Sharpen - which in FastStone usually brings the saturation down to the desired level.
Add canvas up to 800pixels and text
Save again as near 200kb as possible
That's it!

Another useful website about PSE

Regards,

Peter