highway

[Dennis Bishop]

When a passenger in the front seat, I sometimes have my iPhone at the ready for photos. This is on I-75 northbound into Detroit. At high speeds, it's not always easy to capture what I want, and I'd tried at this spot before without capturing anything worth processing. The sky was featureless so the one you see, here, was an HDR shot (also with the iPhone) taken months later while standing beside the car in a shopping center parking lot.





iPhone 5s, PureShot camera app, iPro Super Wide auxiliary lens (I think), 1/1600 second

processing highlights

• The exposure of the single shot of the highway was increased and decreased 1 1/2 stops in Camera Raw to give a 3-exposure HDR that was especially important in the shadows and generally improved the contrast.
• flipped horizontally for composition
• At however-many-miles-per-hour, there wasn't time to be sure the phone was level, and it wasn't. My first inclination was to Warp the slant out in Free Transform. However I decided it'd be more fun to increase the angle and add distortion with Warp.
• Silver Efex, Topaz Simplify, Fractalius, and Alien Skin Snap Art were the plug-ins used.
• A Photo Filter adjustment layer was used to make the concrete a nearly neutral gray against the cool sky.
• The border is a combination of a Kim Klassen texture and the same texture treated in Silver Efex. Both were blurred a bit, and the blend mode of the two layers was Difference.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Dennis,

Greetings. That is one great image! The curves, the shadow lines, the bridges, the short repeated lines... all work together to present a dynamic scene though it's static... maybe potential energy. Anyway, very cool. Good show!

Cheers,

-Michael-

[gary ellwein]

The foreground S curve and the banked roadway make the image. One is swept into the city center. The muted grey color palette and border are effective. The overhead roadway keeps one's eyes focused on the road. The more I look at the image, the more I like it.

[Diane Miller]

Crazy wonderful! I wonder if this one could also be interesting without the outline treatment.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . I wonder if this one could also be interesting without the outline treatment.

Funny thing . . . I wondered about that, too, for a long time. Here it is without. The suspension cables only showed up with the outlines, but it may not be that big a loss. Thanks for your comments.

[Diane Miller]

I'm enjoying the cleaner, more industrial look here. Don't miss the cables. It is a very unique image!

[Judy Howle]

I really, really like the 2nd one. As has been said, it's very cool! I had to look twice to make sure my eyes were working properly due to the distortion. Well done!

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Dennis, I like them both and I'm not sure which I like better. I found the light posts mildly distracting (especially the one on the left that has the light on top partially cut off) in the first image but that becomes a non issue in the second post. And I'm finding I don't miss the cables with those diagonal lines as much as I thought I would. I do think I would like a little more of the detail from the first post on parts of the re post (maybe under the overpass and the columns on the right?). I love!! the perspective and the curves. You do wonderful things with an iPhone.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Dennis,

I guess I'm partial to the lines, though the one without seems a bit more twisted. Speaking of lines... I recently got a new computer and discovered Simplify had upgraded to Simplify 4 since I last downloaded it (Been using Simplify 3). I really like their new line presets (though I still diddle with them a fair amount).

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Dennis Bishop]

After doing the re-post, I put the lines back in at a lower opacity and thought it was a good compromise.

Michael, I upgraded to Simplify 4 right away. It's so nice that the upgrades are free. The upgrade to ReMask 5 came during the summer when I didn't have my real computer. It used to be that I used ReMask a lot but find myself relying more and more on Photoshop's masking tools. One of these days, I'll download ReMask 5. (I probably would've been happy to have it last week while working on an image I haven't posted, yet, because of another trip back to the Marblehead Peninsula.

[Wendy Kates]

Dennis,

I loved this image when I first viewed it last week, but got sidetracked so I'm late to the party with my comments. I actually prefer the OP: I really like the lines and cables because they provide a lot of definition to the image. I love the curves and sense of motion. You taken a seemingly mundane subject and made it into a fascinating work of art...and with an iPhone no less!