The Equestrian Statue of King Edward VII located on the north side of Queen's Park in Toronto behind the Ontario Provincial Legislature Building.
This statue stood in India before it was brought to Toronto as a gift by the Government of India.
The base of this monument (seen here at the bottom) sits atop a slope of about 20 feet from the ground. I positioned myself on the east side of the slope and tried to squat and plant my feet firmly on the slanted/uneven side. I nearly fell.
It was 3:45PM (the sun was high in the sky in front and above me) and I waited until the sun was behind the statue and I used this for backlighting. I wanted to shoot this on a cloudy day for some textures in the sky. The day was cloudier than I wanted and the sun although peeping through the clouds wasn't very bright.
Shot in raw mode, manual settings. I didn't realize that an ND filter was attached to the lens. I thought I only had the polarizing filter.
During conversion from raw, I further darkened the sky and increased shadows.
Post-processing:
levels adjustment
selective color adjustment (boosted the white and black a little bit)
grayscale then colorized with values of 193, 6, 0
cloned out some tree tops that are too high in the frame
used lighting effects (Filter->Render), to brighten the sky
more levels adjustments
cropped
resized
usm
Canon 18-55mm lens. Yes, I'm finding that I'm using this lens a lot lately for my challenge entries. I love its sharpness.
Statistics
Place: 63 out of 169 Avg (all users): 5.7277 Avg (commenters): 6.0000 Avg (participants): 5.7549 Avg (non-participants): 5.6966 Views since voting: 2319 Votes: 191 Comments: 12 Favorites: 1 (view)
I like the way you have taken this it looks very dramatic great silhouette
nice detail its just a shame the base could not be cropped closer
then it would appear to be free Nice work
Nice idea to backlight this statue. However, I see a lot of monuments with riders on horses in most towns and cities I go to, so this doesn't have as much impact as it should. I wish there were no trees in the background, or trees with a more striking outline. I think the shadow detail works well here. Edit: I see no reason why this shouldn't be a helpful comment.
The angle and overcast day give a rather menacing nearly "Sleepy Hollow" (overlooking the fact that the rider has a head) feel to the picture, I dig it.
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
