Protection
I've had this image laying around for, well, since the 24th April 2010. I knew I'd post it eventually. I took it during a full day photo walk around the west end. I find that if I don't get time to process all the cooler images I take, they end up getting left behind. I didn't want this one to get left behind because I like it too much.
I spent the most part of an hour on the train home working on a different image, trying to process it to a look that I wanted using Silver Efex Pro. By the time I got that lovely battery warning from Mac OS X I decided I hated the image and was never going to ever post it. Was I just finished with that particular image because my battery was empty? No. It's like looking at the values on sliders when you're effecting an image. They mean nothing, and even though I'm often drawn to round off to the nearest 10 if I'm close to it, I ask myself why? Why would it look cooler just because I've rounded off values to satisfy my own desire for order (in this circumstance). Madness.
Processing for this image involved bumping the Structure up to 49% (no rounding) in Silver Efex Pro. I chose to apply the Ilford FP4 Plus 125 film type, and spent far too much time tweaking the split toning effect, Preset 3 to get the look you see here. I also added a Vignette of -31% with a size of 75%. Tomorrow I'll post the image I used to create this split toner, because it actually looks cooler applied to that image. I don't hate it so much anymore. It actually looks very very cool. When in doubt, step away and come back to it with rested, fresh eyes.
