Colourful City Abstract

WHAT

This is a detailed look at the side of the colourful 'Santos' building on Tank Street, Brisbane City. The grey/blue squares are the windows and the pink/red/orange colours mark each floor of the building.

WHY

On this particular day, I'd been searching for some 'abstract' style shots around Brisbane City. This building caught my eye because of the contrasting bright colours. I thought it was a perfect candidate image to add to one of the groups of which I'm a member on 'Redbubble' called "Abstract Lines".

It wasn't until I took at look at this shot on my computer that I realised I'd managed to capture 2 office ceiling lights on the right hand side of my image, which I quite liked.

HOW

For this shot, I was standing on the footpath a block over from the Santos building and at about a 45 degree angle to the side of the Santos building. I used a tripod and attached my 70-300m lens so I could sufficiently zoom in to the colourful features of the building and exclude the sky or any other nearby structures. I set the camera to manual mode and zoomed to 180mm.

Taken at aperture f/10 and 1/200s shutter speed

POST PRODUCTION

I used photoshop to slightly increase the vibrance of the building's colours

UQ Cloisters

WHAT
Cloisters of the 'Earth Sciences' building at St Lucia campus of the University of Queensland (UQ).

WHY
UQ was where I studied my science degree and I always liked the sandstone buildings that surrounded the grassy "Great Court" Area.

I selected this particular cloister to photograph because of the nice shadows cast by the arches and columns on the left wall . Looking into the photo, I find my eye is drawn to the end of the pathway and makes me want to see what's around the corner.

HOW
At the time I took this shot, I had just been introduced to the world of HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography by my husband. Therefore, this in an HDR image. I used a tripod and remote cable shutter lead to prevent any movement of the camera for the 3 bracketed shots I took. The exposure levels for the three shots were -2,0,+2.

Usually the campus is bustling with students moving around, however I was there on a weekend about an hour before sunset and the place was almost deserted, hence I was able to take my time composing the shot without people walking through it.

POST PRODUCTION
I uploaded the 3 images into Photomatix (software used for producing HDR images by combining shots taken at different exposure levels). I then tone mapped and adjusted the resulting image using the available options in photomatix until I was happy with the results.