The photo was taken with a Hoya R72 infrared filter. That's why the lighting is so funny :) What you see are the ruins of the so called "Ruinenberg" (Ruin Hills) here in Potsdam. They actually aren't real ruins because king Frederick II of Prussia already let them build as ruins. You can read the story of the Ruinenberg in english here
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Oops, I just saw that I didn't leave my obligatory post-challenge comment to this photo... Well, to be honest I was a bit disappointed by the score. I thought it would do better in this challenge.
I put some effort into it. I did the shooting on two days test different lighting conditions by different positions of the sun. Postprocessing was difficult, because heavy changes to the contrast/levels etc. would increase the grain from the long exposure time.
Some people complained about the big border. That was inspired by Remie who sometimes uses big borders, too. First I didn't like bigger borders (or borders for that matter) but then I somehow thought it would fit. When you go to a exhibition, photos are often displayed in white mats/passepartout which give the photo a proper and clean surrounding. That's what I wanted to imitate here.
On to some direct responses:
@tyrkinn+vjoz: You're right, the contrast between the ruins and the sky is low but I wanted an overall dark theme. The challenge was "desolation" and the subject are ruins, I think it's clear why I didn't want a stark black&white contrast.
@amsmyth+tomc: That way the most helpful hint. The infrared light made the bushes and trees so white. I didn't see it when submitting but now I agree that this does not fit. I think it's distracting and lightens the image too much.
@'Pong+Fayech: It's not processed very much. The effect comes from the infrared filter and is not some digital effect.
@tarique: I admit that I used the infrared filter just for fun. I thought it would give the lighting a more ghostly/out-of-this-world feel. But it seems that didn't work out.
@ceovishy: No I can't share the non-negativised version of the photo because it isn't negativised (I think you mean "inverted").
Anyway. Thanks to everybody for your feedback. As always it was very helpful.
good shot
though I think that the foreground is fadin pretty much to the background...
more lightning could have fixed this but as this is an outdoors shot you could use a lot of patience to get the light right...
The subject (ruins) almost disappear in the sky. Maybe channel mixer in PS could have done better to bring some contrast between the ruins and the sky. Looks spooky
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