Old style Bushells tea advert on the side of a building
I had noticed this before on my way over to Mike’s on the weekends. This time though there were no cars parked along the side of the road. So instead of going left off the round-a-bout at the second exit and then over to West Swan Road I continued around and drove over to where it was.
I am in ‘old’ Guildford not far from the Rose and Crown hotel and there is this old building with the faded remains of a Bushells tea advertisement painted on the side of it.
It’s a pity that there is the shade of that tree right across the word ‘Bushells’ but that is the life of a photographer. I could try coming back early in the morning with the sun at the back of the building but then the sign would be in the shadow of the building.
I love these old building adverts. Actually I guess I like just about anything old, faded, rusted, and falling down.
I decided to put this picture through Photomatix and see what it could do with it. Long time readers will recall previous experiments of mine using the HDR enhancement utility Photomatix.
Here are a couple of experiments with Photomatix on this picture.
Above is the Photomatix ‘Photographic’ filter but I have increased the blue channel by 10 percent. This works reasonable well except it has made the shadows from the tree harder and I think I have overdone the blue—it has gone too dark.
In the shot above I have used Photomatix’s ‘Deep’ filter but then I have done some clean up editing in Photoshop Elements. I dialled the red down a bit (notice the tea cup), and then I used the Element’s dodge tool to dodge out some of the shadow from the tree. Notice how the tree shadow on the word Bushells and the vegetation below it has been lightened up?
Just scroll back now and check out the image that came out of the camera and compare it to the image above to get the full impact of the enhancement from 10 minutes of editing.
Have I happened to mention before how much I love photography? And I love the editing phase as well; or what the pros call ‘photofinishing’.
