Robert Santafede

↓ click for audio (Noisia, The Distance), or here.

I’m leaning more towards the original color version, mainly because of the way it shows the lighting better. I still plan on tweaking the monochrome to see if I can get the lighting to show through more.

↓ click for audio (Porcupine Tree, Heartattack in a Layby)

Comments have been pretty weird lately.. Some messages were being tagged as spam (Thanks Carl for pointing it out!) and I really don’t check my spam folder, so my apologies for a late response/approval.

So.. I realized I hadn’t posted many pictures of people lately. I’ve been spending more time on taking architecture shots. And while I enjoy that, the unpredictable nature of us and our emotions have always been something amazing to photograph.

Had a hard time letting the colors go in this one.. So why not post both?

This is long overdue – I had been waiting for a decent photo to go along with an awards post. It turns out finding places that have demolished, smashed up trophies isn’t as easy as I had hoped! Who’d have guessed? Maybe one day I’ll stumble upon one.. So forgive the older photo above – it’s the closest thing I had relating to the post (did you notice the plastic bag?)

If you’ve been following this blog for a while now, you may remember the first awards post I made a couple of months ago. I mentioned that I’ve started taking photos about two months prior. It’s funny, these awards posts are almost like a timeline for myself - to see how my own photography is progressing (..and also a great reminder to get rid of the bad early photos! ;p). I’m still shaping my eye, so to speak, and experimenting with different ideas post-processing wise. I think both though, ultimately, are things that will be constantly evolving. Pretty cool.

I still don’t offer much text as to where/what/who & why. The closest thing to an explanation (of sorts) is usually from the title. I’m liking that format – though sometimes it’s harder to figure out a good title rather than getting the actual photo itself! How many different titles describing an old decaying wall can there really be?

Considering how long I’ve let this go, I’m sure you’ll forgive me for not adhering to all the rules of the awards. There would be way too many random things I’d have to list about myself which would bore you to tears.. So on with the good stuff! Lots of links incoming to some of their latest posts.

Richard over on The Future Is Papier Mâché was kind enough to nominate me for the Sunshine Award. Check his photos out, great candid street photography!

These blogs are a collection that have some beautiful landscapes, macros, or just nature oriented in general.

• Livia Mihaela Firincă Photography
• SKEdazzles ~ Living Life Serendipitously
• Pieces Of Me And Other Sundry Things
• f-Stops.net
• 2 Rivers Photos

Cornelia from Strassenfotojournal and Doli from Doliphoto.com nominated my blog for the Versatile Blogger award. Cornelia is an excellent street photographer, and Doli takes beautiful landscapes.

These blogs are always great to visit. Never quite know what to expect, in the best possible way of course.

• Manoli Rizo Fotografia
• Cardinal Guzman
• Photography of Nia
• 2me4art
• Helen’s Photomania Blog

Manoli from her website Manolirizofotografia.com nominated me for the Blog on Fire Award. These blogs are just amazing, and I always find myself really looking forward to more posts from them.

• Dervish Images Brilliant toning, and subject matter.
• Noir, the darker side to sedge808 Excellent urban B&W photography.
• Leticia Larcher  Amazing photography – evocative and beautiful.
• Life, Photography & Other Mistakes  Take a trip around the world, you will be amazed with his work.
• Peace the consciousness, the transitoriness, your existence. Mari is the word-weaver extraordinaire.

Sil over at Visualnotepad.wordpress.com nominated me for the One Lovely Blog Award.

Last, but certainly not least – these blogs have charm, personality, creativity and obvious talent. It’s always a joy to visit them.

• Artblablablablog
• Impressions Of My World
• Adrianpym
• Chuck A Stetson
• Twisindezak

Whew! Lots of great links up there. I started this post around 12AM EST and it’s closer to 4AM right now. Granted, my connection reset a few times (thank you ‘save draft’!), it’s pretty hard for me to narrow the list.. There are too many great blogs on here.

If I’ve nominated your blog but you don’t participate with awards, my apologies. Just think of it as a gesture of appreciation.

Now, I sleep.

Damn, this week was total chaos on all different levels.. When everything is too loud, leave the noise.

This was taken inside of an abandoned house while urbexing. The cassette tape (still in color) was one of many in a series on “How To Deal With Anger”. There were two others I found scattered throughout the house, the first and fourth.

I don’t move anything inside the places I find, but I thought about doing it for this one to make the title more obvious.  However, I really couldn’t think of a way to place them all without it looking contrived, so they stayed where they were.

Taking the idea from this older post and continuing to experiment, a sort of combination between black and white, infrared, and over-exposure.

There was a Russian MMO I used to play. Decent graphics (obvious steampunk-ish influences, at least on one side), free to play, and moderately fun.

There’s a specific moment when you are aboard an airship – which reminds me of this photo. Clouds out of the windows in every direction.  When I loaded up this photo and rotated it, I couldn’t help but be reminded how great that looked.. And was unable to rotate it back to it’s original state.

How much more interesting that would’ve been, instead of a ceiling inside of an abandoned industrial warehouse.

Here is Part One if you’ve missed it.

Actually felt quite good to get out of abandoned buildings for a change.

Original image, regular exposure

The exposures have been merged in Photomatix Pro, the settings tweaked. Saved and loaded into Photoshop, added a b&w gradient map, adjusted the blend mode.  Added a levels adjustment mask to get very heavy contrast and a ‘darker’ feel.

Opened the original regular exposure file again in Camera RAW -> Photoshop, paste as a new layer to the HDR image, change layer blend mode and opacity to dull the colors down some. Adjust as necessary to avoid that “over HDR” look.

I’m sure there are plenty of easier (and better) ways to do this – I had received an email asking about how I edited a previous photo.

With the above said, I still prefer the original, just a b&w version of it! I fall victim to HDR when clouds are usually involved though.

I have such a love/hate relationship for HDR – but that’s a story for another day.