I had an idea within literally seconds of seeing the challenge posted - and this isn't it lol.
Sara was working Good Friday and I had the day off - so she dropped me off near where she works and I walked a mile or so into the centre of Peterborough. On the way I walked under this road bridge over the railway - knew it had to be my challenge shot immediately.
Shot in RAW - converted to JPEG using ACR, cranked up the vibrance and contrast settings in ACR. Rotated slightly.
Then into CS3 - Channel mixer adjustment layer split 50/50 between red and green channels, then a HSL adjustment layer to get a slight tint. Then shadow/highlight tool, crop, resize, smart sharpen and save for web.
Didn't stop there - opened up in PSP XI and did One Step Noise Removal. Much prefer PSP's noise removal to CS3 or ACR. Wouldn't normally perform noise removal on a resized image as it obliterates all the fine detail but that's not such an issue on a shot like this.
A half decent score would be nice, but I'm quite pleased with the shot whatever the voters think. One thing I do like about the shot, which I wonder if voters will pick up on, is this: you know how when you look up at the sky, it's always darker above your head then off in the distance? (Something to do with the way the Sun's rays hit particles in the atmosphere - not sure exactly but someone will know) Well the channel mixer exacerbated that so the sky is much darker at the top of the pic than the bottom. As it happens the lighter parts of the ironwork are at the top and the darker, shaded parts are at the bottom, so they contrast each other :-)
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I did give this a 6 for the beautiful mix of pattern, light and shadow. I'm thinking that the reason why I did not give this a higher score was because of the color tone. Have you tried this in just pure black and white?
I love that someone described this as distracting, lol. It should distract you, it should keep you busy examining it and finding all it conceals. I love this, really. There are many, many patterns here and they are all interesting.
You got a very good score from me on this one - I quite agree with your assessment of the light and pattern play of the lights against the darks and vice versa. And in fact, the longer I look at it, the more I like it, too. As for the score? I dunno - maybe too busy? Some might not like the tilt - that's a love or hate kinda thing with some people. You do have some good comments as to why some people didn't care for it as much. I'd consider that a success in a challenge, by the way. Glad you're pleased with it and that it came out the way you wanted it to. That is also a success!
I like the abstract architecture, but I think this may be a better shot on either a completely clear, or completely overcast day, as the clouds in the lower left kinda break up the pattern.
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