This is taken west of Manitou Springs, Colorado at Graffiti Falls. Its the underside of a bridge that's absolutely COVERED with graffiti. There's also a waterfall to the left of where this picture is taken. The scenery changes all the time as graffiti is legal there and people come with spray paint cans and express themselves over and over other people's expressions. My "Waldo" is my brother Andrew in a hooded jacket. He had to hold REALLY still for about 8 different 3 second exposures of the same shot.
Post Processing was mainly just combining 4 different exposures in PS to even out the lighting--sort of a fake HDR actually-- and then evening it out more with levels and masking. I had initially wanted to keep it in color because the graffiti was in all sorts of awesome colors. But the black and white just seemed to unify the picture and hide my "Waldo" better. I hope it does well!
--- Oh Wow!!! 4th! Thanks everyone... this is my PB by far! Eep!
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Just saw this for the first time. Really an excellent piece of work. FWIW, "combining 4 different exposures to even out the light" is exactly what HDR actually is :-) The levels and masking you had to apply afterward is the manual equivalent of HDR tone mapping functions. What you did here represents the *origins* of HDR processing, which has now been automated by a lot of different programs. But there are MANY serious landscape photographers who still prefer to do it the way you did this, because it looks more natural that way.
Obviously, I'm not one of 'em :-) But I admire this. Good work!
Had this in my top 3 images for the challenge (1st and 3rd were the other 2). I had a feeling that this might be a hotpasta image. Congrats on the Hm and new PB.
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