johnrochaphoto.net

Caption:

Red and Blue Building in Thassos

Description:

This image is based on a building by the quay near the ferry port on the island of Thassos in Greece.

If you want to buy a print, card or poster of a building in Thassos, go to Fine Art America.

Photo Comments:

Thassos is a magical island in Northern Greece which combines heat and bright light with abundant vegetation.

It was the light which first attracted me to this building and then the stark clean lines.

Right from the beginning I saw that I could construct a graphic image from the original scene.

The first thing I did was to shoot an image of the sky separately.

Increasingly as I learn more about digital photography I will shoot separate elements of a scene with a view to combining them after.

I find this neater and more effective than trying to manipulate a single image later and of course it makes it easier to ensure correct exposure for different parts of the picture, and rearrange the relative size and sharpness of the individual elements.

In the computer I overlaid the image with blocks of different colours which I merged into the originals.

Although I used a low ISO I wanted to make sure that there was no noise in the sky where it is usually most apparent. Skies do not have to be sharply focussed so for this image I used a touch of gaussian blur to eliminate all noise.

Once I had the different parts and layers of the image blended and merged together I changed the format of the picture Making it longer and thinner than the original.

Caption:

Storm Over The Tomb of Bin Ali In Salalah the capital of Dhofar in the Sultanate of Oman.

Description:

Bin Ali was a famous Islamic Saint and sage and this is his tomb in the Dhofar area of Oman.

Dhofar is the southern region of Oman centred on the regional capital Salalah.

Bin Ali’s tomb is one of the finest examples of medieval Islamic architecture in the region.

If you want to use this picture, click here for Alamy

Photo Comments:

This has been one of my most successful photos.

It has sold as a travel photo in a number of outlets sometimes in the Arab press.

It has also been successful purely as a photo in its own right.

And of course, it has attracted some controversy.

Not because of its content but because of its composition.

This photograph is a combination of two photos that I took especially with this composition in mind.

Like many photographers I believe in pre-visualization rather than just relying on luck and random shooting – though this can yield some great pictures too.

This photo was taken with my Bronica 6×6 film camera.

I was visiting Salalah the beautiful southern province of the Sultanate of Oman when I found this tomb.

I knew as soon as I saw the scene that I would need a different sky and composed my photo accordingly.

I was confident, and rightly so, that there would soon be storm clouds in the sky.

I later combined my two photos after scanning the film.

When this photo appeared in Practical Photography, the editor of the time, William Cheung sent my a note saying, “Nice one John”.

Some readers were not so happy.

I blame those who have no understanding of the history of photography and those who still promulgate the view that photography is literally “truthful” in some way.

I was accused of being a bad photographer, dishonest and untalented.

Well everyone’s entitled to his or her view but I stand by this picture and the process.

I used the standard 80mm lens for both originals steadying my Bronica on my old Slik tripod.