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i'm trying to achieve a '20th century, grunge industrial city' appearance in the following photo...

original...



edited...



...never mind the composition, i'm going to re-shoot the scene on a dark night with heavy rain, and without cars and pedestrians... but i feel like it has a long way to go with regards to the post processing... does anyone have some tips for me?

No need to re shot really, i would combine different exposures because its looks like you took this photo on a cloudy day thus hence the "white" boring looking sky. Would be interesting to see how your going to get rid of all those cars....

I could try to give this some work (you could see my flickr for some of the stuff i have done)

But right of the bat i would throw in a new sky, a normal sky HDR it with photomatix and make it look black and dark and stormy, then i would work on adding a very grey grey tone as a overall to the image. Now i also think that you could do what i call specefic color saturation this effects is wiked, i cant really explain it...those are some ideas of mine

if you are going to re shot i would suggest you take use the spot metering or the partial metering from different parts of the image you plan to shot

just some thoughts

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yeah... go ahead... show me what you can do with the photo...

There's a lot more work to be done pre-processing which will reduce the need to post-process. You might need to calibrate your monitor; gamma and colours are quite off. I can see what you were trying to achieve, but without pedestrians and cars? People in photographs give a lived-in feel. All too often I see people trying to take (travel) snaps without others in the frame. It's not wrong, but the image becomes more sterile.

Alex is right about needing several exposures. Failing that, you can use an ND grad to reduce the exposure gradient from sky to foreground. Another problem is the depth of field. There's a lot of it, and I'd personally advise you to use a tripod so that you can use a small aperture and focus a third into the frame - a hyperfocal technique - to control the DoF.

Finally the objective of a "grudge industrial city" is incongruous with the subject in the photo. It doesn't quite fit the brief, does it?

Sorry if this borders harshness, but there should be some good pointers for your re-shoot. Thanks for sharing.

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naah... not harsh, just honest... and i appreciate your honesty. thanks.

i guess i'll go get myself a cheapish tripod and do some bracketing