Picture of the Week

The photo I have chosen for this week was taken on 25th August during my trip to Blackpool. I took the photo just before I made my way to the University for a tour of the photography department.

I wanted to capture a more unique image of the Blackpool Tower than the typical tourist shot like the one I have posted previously. Stood around 500 feet from the tower I had the idea that if I could find a reflection in the surrounding landscape I could produce a more abstract effect, this actually proved quite difficult. There weren't any large windows or doors that were either immediately obvious or had a complete reflection of the structure.

I crossed roads, passed through Taxi ranks and pushed through crowds of people until I looked higher than street level and saw a marble clad doorway. The picture you see is the reflection I saw, albeit heavily edited.

The photo was taken on my Canon 20D using the ever-trusty 50mm 1.8. Using a relatively small aperture of f/8 selected in Aperture Priority I attempted to capture a wide enough depth of field to maintain sharpness in the reflection.

Post processing was quite extensive, in colour the reflection appeared very washed out which was quite uncomplimentary to such a brilliant structure. Black and white helped to define the reflection more and create an image with much more depth. To achieve such a definite reflection in what was black marble required me to play around with more options than just contrast, blacks and clarity. I had to use colour mixing in the black and white panel to create such a prominent shape.

I hope you enjoy the picture as much as I enjoyed capturing and editing it!