The L Train

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Wanted to accentuate Chicago's gritty and industrial side:

[attachment=20682:20080829...cago_025.jpg]

[fredjeang]

Great pic!!
This is one of my favorite topic (after dogs), industrial structures.
I really enjoy this photograph, the composition and colors and the contrast distribution.
My eye ended in the train cabin where there is the colored man.

Is it film or digital? I ask that because it reminds me of film like colors-texture.

Good work really.

Cheers,

Fred.

[Mihailo Radicevic]

Love the light and textures ... very nice feelin'

[RSL]

Slobodan, That's a great shot. You caught the light perfectly. My only beef is that it seems to have a blue color cast. Part of that comes from what's obviously a clear blue sky, but not all of it. I used Viveza to cut some of the blue in this version. What do you think?

[attachment=20686:20080829...cago_025.jpg]

[fredjeang]

As if we were working as a team, I took your picture and the Russ one on a layer and made a mix of  both to see.
Result is in between.
[attachment=20687:20080829...ago_025c.jpg]

[seamus finn]

Agreed - great shot but can't decide on which version. I'm inclined towards less blue, but how much?

Seamus

[ckimmerle]

I like this image. Also, I don't mind the blue as it's a direct reflection (is that possible?) of the blue sky. It's supposed to be there and acts as a compliment to the warm-colored tracks below.

I am a bit distracted by those sunlit tracks, though. They have such powerful lines and shapes, my attention is drawn away from the more interesting and subtle components in the image. Maybe if they were toned down just a little bit, it might help balance the overall image.
Regardless, it works!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

This original, out-of-camera shot (as rendered by LR/ACR), was a starting point:

[attachment=20689:20080829...cago_025.jpg]

[Peter Mellis]

A beautiful picture in terms of composition, color and detail. The original however, tells more of a story in terms of the juxtaposition with the buildings on the right; identifies it as being in an urban area. The first shot could have been taken anywhere, unless one is intimately familiar with the EL (New York way of saying L)

[RSL]

The hazards of cropping!

[DarkPenguin]

Wanted to accentuate Chicago's gritty and industrial side:

[attachment=20682:20080829...cago_025.jpg]

Love it.

[popnfresh]

First of all, I really like the shot. I think I like the merged version best. A little of the blue works for me. I'm curious what you did in post-process with this. It almost looks like there's some edge enhancement going on, and something resembling a very subtle posterization in the tonality.

[fredjeang]

This original, out-of-camera shot (as rendered by LR/ACR), was a starting point:

[attachment=20689:20080829...cago_025.jpg]

My ghost ! I would not like to live in these flats on the right.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

My ghost ! I would not like to live in these flats on the right.

Right... but check out those lovely lounge chairs and coffee tables on the terraces  Reminds me of my Barcelona days (sans the rails, of course).

[attachment=20695:20080829...cago_018.jpg]

[fredjeang]

Right... but check out those lovely lounge chairs and coffee tables on the terraces  Reminds me of my Barcelona days (sans the rails, of course).

[attachment=20695:20080829...cago_018.jpg]

True. It looks like a spanish terrasse flat. And in your crop, with a little bit of imagination, the blue wall could be a view on lake Michigan  
(truly, it really looks like water).

[wolfnowl]

My ghost ! I would not like to live in these flats on the right.

When I was a kid we lived less than a mile from the air force base and the jets used to take off over our house - literally making the windows rattle.  You can get used to almost anything.

Great work, BTW!

Mike.

[Rob C]

Personally, I think the first picture posted is best.

I have no problem with the blue at all - I believe that the artist is free to choose whatever tone he wants to use, reality having precious little to do with it.  In my imagination or reading of this, it's all about cold blue steel, decay, sunlight, and the living horrors that some have to endure on a daily basis.

I would have been delighted to have shot it.

Rob C

[Rob C]

When I was a kid we lived less than a mile from the air force base and the jets used to take off over our house - literally making the windows rattle.  You can get used to almost anything.

Great work, BTW!

Mike.

My sympathies, Mike; my in-laws owned a caravan that they parked at the seaside in Prestwick, Scotland. There was Prestwick airport just across the main road with the added oomph of the USAAF base! Bumps and grinds, bumps and grinds (non musical, non erotic), and day and night. But then, nobody wasted much time sleeping in those places - life was about parties...

I never took to caravans at all; their daughter and I were given it to use one holiday when we were first married - I lasted one night and we were back home before lunch. Forget the noise, its the lack of civilization, bucket-and-chuck-it, all that sort of inconvenience.

Guess I'll never make a landscape shooter.

On the USAAF base: some local nutters objected strongly to the presence and campaigned so long and so hard against it that eventually the base pulled out. Considering that the PX stores managed to sell (indirectly) more Zippos to the locals than to the airmen, that the bars, hookers and restaurants flourished courtesy the dollar, the eventual departure brought the town to its financial knees. Clever boys.

Rob C

[RSL]

When I was a kid we lived less than a mile from the air force base and the jets used to take off over our house - literally making the windows rattle.  You can get used to almost anything.

Mike, I lived ON a base for about 10 of my 26 years in the air force, and you're right, you get used to it after a while. The only place I wasn't able to get used to it was at Udorn AFB in Thailand. We were bombing in Cambodia, trying to hold back Pol Pot, and when a flight of F4s took off the sound and shaking ground would almost knock you down.

[fredjeang]

Mike, I lived ON a base for about 10 of my 26 years in the air force, and you're right, you get used to it after a while. The only place I wasn't able to get used to it was at Udorn AFB in Thailand. We were bombing in Cambodia, trying to hold back Pol Pot, and when a flight of F4s took off the sound and shaking ground would almost knock you down.

Well, in Mont-de-Marsan, France, wich is a nuclear air force base, we had the Mirage 4 noise. Sometimes they took off with extra rockets and indeed everything was shaking. I was crazy when they took off at night. One day I phoned the control tower, "insulting" them (in a fun way) about that night flights, but forgeting that the telephones in a military base were internal, so they discovered me. Colonel sent me cleaning the windows of the control tower as punishment  

Here is the noisy bird in question.
[attachment=20713:mirage4_02.jpg]