I conjure up a single tear, the people look like ants from here

[venta]

This morning, the London Eye (née Millennium Wheel) was advertising free rides for people in the queue before 0930. We figured that a ride on the Eye in the (forecast) snow would be pretty, so bounded out of bed uncharacteristically early.

While queueing, we idly wondered whether a wooden structure - just visible over a small, marble-clad wall and some hedges - was Art or a climbing frame. Being of an enquiring nature, I hopped up onto the wall to look.

My knees are a bit shoddy at the best of times, and the usually-sound one is currently in a rather sorry state (see bicycle, falling off sideways), meaning I hopped up rather awkwardly. And the thing about marble covered in slush? It's quite slippery. Also, marble is quite hard on one's shins, elbows, face, etc.

Anyway, it had started to snow (bang on the forecast time of 9am), but not in an attractive way. Tiny, spiteful pinheads of ice settled round us. By the time it was our turn on the Eye, London had settled into a rather unappealing grey. I'd taken my new toy with me[*] but the photos really aren't much cop.

Visibility was poor, and I was quite shaky. Not only did my leg hurt quite a lot, but I was very shivery. If you're going to stand for over an hour in the cold, I highly recommend not soaking your gloves and trousers in icy slush first.



Anyone got any tips for taking pictures on miserable grey days? Through slightly grubby, rain-spattered glass? (I realise that one could have been framed better, but I'd missed the ideal time and the bottom right strut was moving rapidly up the clocktower...)

By the way, from the top-down perspective you get from the Eye, we decided it was probably a climbing frame.

[*] The camera. Not the piano. There are limits to what I'm prepared to do in the name of art.

Comments

[zotz]

This?

My friend Tom used to work on the London Eye, when it was fairly new. The high point was getting to show Sigourney Weaver and her daughter around it, him being a film buff ever so slightly.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, that. Rather more obviously a climbing frame from that angle.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Anyone got any tips for taking pictures on miserable grey days?

I'll leave the real tips to the real photographers, but you can do quite a bit after-the-fact in Photoshop (or similar). A quick sequence of:

* Reduce Noise
* Brightness up 20, Contrast Up 50
* Saturation up 30

...gives this:



And if I was going to spend more than 30s on it I'd mask out the buildings then apply different filters to foreground and background, which can be quite a good way to make mediocre pics look better than they really are. :-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

See... the thing is that I always think of Photoshopping as cheating :) (Yes, I'm aware that absolutely no one but neilh agrees with me here ;)

Also, I have no idea how to set about it. I don't have a copy of Photoshop, though I believe that other people acheive the same effects with the Gimp. Whenever I've tried to find online guides to such things, though, they're either completely trivial (47 steps to cropping a picture) or way over my head ("simply mask out the buildings" ;).

I suppose I ought to set about learning how to do this properly, one day :(

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

To be fair, it's a pretty deep rabbithole!

(I'm happy to offer instruction, but that would be actual Photoshop rather than GIMP, so probably not useful.)

[neilh.livejournal.com]

If you take your photographs properly, they shouldn't need photoshopping... although I'm not actually opposed to it, I realise that nearly every picture I see these days has had some kind of post-processing applied to it.

The best thing I've found for brightening up pictures under conditions like this is to manually set the white-balance on the camera - I carry around a piece of which paper for this purpose, and can often be seen 'taking a picture of a blank piece of paper'. Of course, you know to set the auto-focus to 'mountains' so you don't get very well focussed grubby glass.

[venta.livejournal.com]

What is this white-balancing of which you speak? It's not something I'm really aware of at all... I really should settle down with some of the books I've been given and learn about the technical stuff rather than just assuming I can get away with pointing the sticky-out end at things.

My new camera is the first one I've owned (of the non-compact variety) which has auto-focus, and actually it seems pretty smart at focussing on the right thing. Sometimes it doesn't, but I have a little MF switch and can oppress it.

[neilh.livejournal.com]

White balance tells the camera 'this is what white looks like under this lighting', then it can adjust the colours to look better. Most cameras think they can do that automatically but they are quite poor at it.

[lnr]

Ouch! Hope you feel better soon!

[metame.livejournal.com]

Not an expert but in grey conditions I have sometimes got lovely results form aiming directly at the brighter bt of sky (cos the sun is already pre-diffused but you get some contrast back).
Black and White is an option for "virtue out of a wossname that isn't virtuous" fixes.
And it's all about composition anyway (assuming the pic is at least not wobbly).
Oh, and given you have less light around, maybe concentrate on getting one thing in focus, and not worrying if the rest is background blur.

Usng flash into falling snow can be interesting, though I've neevr actually taken one I really liked that way.

[metame.livejournal.com]

Here's a (really rather low res) crop of how the greyish background might just help you look at the pretty in the middle.



(assuming it works).