Malibu Dreamhouse, a photo from Amazonas, North

Photographer's Note

This photo is taken from the balcony of the little cheap hotel we stayed in Manaus for one night.

There are many abandoned houses in Manaus. What was little surprising for me that many of these abandon houses bear traces that once they were not just houses, but marvellous elegant houses.

The original photo was in portrait format, but with all these small windows, walls and doorways it looked quite messy composition. So I tried a landscape crop. I'll put the original version in Workshop, so tell me if what I did was any useful or if you had cropped it differently.
I don't like that the colors look a bit plain. With the green plants moving in, this could perhaps be an interesting photo to experiment with partially BW photo. But I lack skills for that :)

Postprocessing:
15x10 crop, autolevels, resize, unsharp mask, frame

EXIF:
ExposureTime - 1/250 seconds
FNumber - 8.00
ExposureProgram - Normal program
ISOSpeedRatings - 400
ExposureBiasValue - 0.00
MeteringMode - Multi-segment
Flash - Not fired, compulsory flash mode

linask, Davids, pamastro has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

jsbedard (0) 2007-02-05 18:22

Very good idea to crop this picture, the result is very interesting! I love those plants growing everywhere. You can see a lot of those semi-abandoned houses in Salvador da Bahia too, in the old city. JS

agbonavita (0) 2007-02-06 6:13

Hi Lennart, great view of this abandoned building. I never saw a view from the upside like that. You got nice colors and textures.

TFS
Andre

wolf38 (30) 2007-02-06 8:00

Hello Lennart. The photo shows the purge of a formerly beautiful house. Nevertheless the house is still very worth seeing. The colors, doors and windows show an interesting architectural style. The remainders of the old house give much area to the fantasy. It harms that the house was not in time reconditioned. Me waves taken photo pleases very well. Best regards, Wolfgang.

nivaldo (15417) 2007-02-06 10:10

Hello Sundja:
A very interesting and unusual kind of picture. Congratulations, Nivaldo.

Davids (56) 2007-02-08 11:03

Lennart,
Before you post nr. 100, let's dream away in this house. I'm an architect, I create dreams, sell them, and make sure they keep people happy.
I can watch a long time to this photo and immagine where the kitchen was, the bathroom, how the roof was shaped . . . . but I can't understand why it has been left. It's probably something of the history of the town.
I looked at your origonal portrait version, but I think this one is more interesting.
The photo looks a bit pale, but if I look at the EXIF, I understand you had a lot of daylight.

Anyway, no real critisism, good luck with nr. 100!

pamastro (7296) 2007-04-26 17:17

I think I'll go with this version of the photo, as well. I like that the format crosses the main lines of the photo. For me it keeps me inside the space, more, than the other. The other makes me sort of move linearly in and then out. This is a neat little find that was behind your hotel. It reminds me of the homes in Herculaneum, all once beautiful town homes but not roofless and grown over. The colors here are also excellent and the depth created by the contrast really goes all around with the framing to create a volume. I really want to explore through the doors and windows and keep finding myself winding through a maze. Nicely done.