Interesting use of ND filters....

Would be interesting to hear how they got such deserted streets. Doesnt look like long exposure to me as there is no movement in clouds or water. Im guessing maybe a combination of very early mornings and a number of photographs combined to make things selectively dissapear.
 
allymac said:
Would be interesting to hear how they got such deserted streets. Doesnt look like long exposure to me as there is no movement in clouds or water. Im guessing maybe a combination of very early mornings and a number of photographs combined to make things selectively dissapear.
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That's what I thought - too many people nicely captured in some scenes with the exclusion of all others too - some in what looks like very dangerous places to hold a pose for long enough to melt all other transient objects completely out of the picture - maybe cloning and then stacking?
 
If these are not composites then they are one in a million shots.
Very nicely done though but as already mentioned, lack of movement in water,clouds and even a flock of stationary pigeons in one shot, ain't never seen a motionless pigeon, other than the decoy ones i used to use in another kind of shooting. so i very much doubt they're all down to nd filtering more like an amalgamation of different techniques coming together post process.
 
These're gorgeous. I like the light & the fog in them. Cleverly done & inspirational work :}

I love these kind of posts.
 
Great set of images, very eerie. I agree that they have an Omega Man feel to them.

And, they are a lot more interesting than the usual milky water shots that seem compulsory with ND filters :)
 
There must be more combining exposures and cloning than ND filters, you will always have some vehicles parked for hours/days.
 
There is a comment below says:
xdozex @LaziestManOnMars
Actually I remember seeing a behind the scenes, and most of the people on the streets were actually rotoscoped out of the city shots.

Not sure what that involves, sounds painful.
 
Jayst84 said:
I would imagine they are stacks of photos, you can set them to blend via the most common pixels, ie things that stay still, Photoshop will get rid of people and traffic almost automatically. Then you can drop in individuals again from another frame.

Or they could just be incredibly patient. ;)
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forgive my ignorance, but how would you go about blending like that, I would love to try stacking photographs together, but im ignorant in the use of photoshop.
if you could suggest what techniques i should (look at/google for), I would be grateful.
 
vizzair said:
forgive my ignorance, but how would you go about blending like that, I would love to try stacking photographs together, but im ignorant in the use of photoshop.
if you could suggest what techniques i should (look at/google for), I would be grateful.
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Well I've sat down and thought these images through and the work that's gone into creating them, there for starters, must be tremendous change in lighting during the shoot so balancing that in post processing is a task in itself although with some practice and base knowledge its not impossible.
The impact of some from this set comes from the fact they are shot in cities that never sleep and that's where the problems start. Yes filtering will eliminate moving objects in frame but only so much, as mentioned earlier, some things don't move for hours so perhaps some cloning has been done to remove these elements.
Whatever happens your not going to want to spend three hours capturing frames for a composite as the light will be all over the place.
Another possibility is that the areas have already been closed off to the public? When film crews are in town would be a great time to try this, such as when brad pitt was or still is filming world war Z (which i can't wait to be released its an amazing book)
 
vizzair said:
forgive my ignorance, but how would you go about blending like that, I would love to try stacking photographs together, but im ignorant in the use of photoshop.
if you could suggest what techniques i should (look at/google for), I would be grateful.
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I haven't read that link above, but if you take a series of shots then in Photoshop just go add to stack and set the blending mode to median, it will blend them based on the most common pixels. ie those showing the street and not the people who were walking around. Because the pixels from the street will be in multiple frames, whereas the people are only in the same place for one frame.
 
thanks for that..
i've now googled it and and found examples. btw Im not going to try emptying cities:lol:
Im just going to see if I can emulate a big stopper by taking lots of pictures of say the sea and then combine to see what comes out.:thinking:
I just now need some good weather that doesn't have flat cloud cover and the tide being out making the sea over a mile away:D
 
Jayst84 said:
I haven't read that link above, but if you take a series of shots then in Photoshop just go add to stack and set the blending mode to median, it will blend them based on the most common pixels. ie those showing the street and not the people who were walking around. Because the pixels from the street will be in multiple frames, whereas the people are only in the same place for one frame.
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Isn't that the most likely scenario? In a very busy city nothing is going to stay still for very long, especially with no waiting or parking zones. so maybe only need to take images for 10 mins or so, and that would mean less issues with changing light.
Tempted to go play :)
 
I love the music in this. Hauntingly beautiful.
 
I love it. Don't know how many shots or how long each exposure was, but in the first scene, you can see a difference in the shadows cast by the lamp posts on either side.
 
Interestingly- I was stuck at Paddington last week for an hour so played with something similar. At rush hour with a 30 sec exposure it's amazing how few people are visible.

Just did it to pass the time but it's something I will try again.
 
I like the atmosphere, the quirkiness of urban without the people/traffic. It just niggles that the sole person/couple in the shots are totally contrived. Or may be its just that I wish I could do that ...
 
A lot of editing no matter how they did it! Good though..
 
I like the idea too, but without seeing what some of these places are like at quiet times of the day, you don't really get a comparison, there are a couple of shots that are awesome and some that look completely irrelevant too. Some seem to be very early morning with the sunlight, maybe only a few cars needed to be cloned or stacking as described. Not a lot of people are knocking about early doors but there is plenty of light in summer to try this out!
 
I think Michael Freeman describes in The Photographer's Eye a stack and delete-through method for removing the tourists from landmarks.

I discussed it with a friend and he took the idea behind the techique and produced HDR shots of marine aquariums - 3x AEB @+/-2, produce a clean (fish-free) image at each exposure by deleting through each stack of three, HDR combine and tonemap the clean exposures, reintroduce the fish from the preferred middle exposure or increase the fish population by reintroducing from more than one of the middle exposures. Very effective.
 
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