January Image - On the Stairs

How I did it - This was taken in October last year on a visit to the city of Liverpool, home of the Beatles. This is inside the very modern styled, recently constructed museum on the waterfront. Central to the building is this wonderful spiral staircase giving access to the two floors above the ground floor. This was taken on my little Lumix GF1 camera looking down from the middle gallery level using a wide angle to emphasise the shape of the spiral staircase. There were people going up and down all the time and the most difficult thing was to get someone in the right spot without too many other people on the stairs. I had to do some work in Photoshop to clone out a blurred person in the bottom right and then I used the Warp tool to stretch the stairs a little at the top left to move a large area of white out of shot. Apart from that, there was just a bit of the usual adjustment of contrast using Curves to give the image a bit more bite.

COMMENTS:
 

Jerry Appel	. : Fine exposure and sharpness in what I presume to be available light scene. I especially like the curves, and the lighting at the lower left. The image required very precise exposure which you have achieved.
Bill Buchanan	A nice composition and lighting. The couple in the foreground helps the composition and add a center of interest. I might ry to rotate the image slightly to the right. This would bring the lead in line of the staircase up towards the upper left corner. I would also try a graduated neutral density filter on the left to tone down the bright white walls of the stair.
Joe Hearst	It's a great staircase and the figures are placed very well indeed. And I love the way the brighness of the walls on both sides of the stairs decreases as they go down. I do think that the back wall is somewhat distracting and needs darkening.
Karen Kotner	This is a very interesting image. in addition to the wonderful curve, I like the placement of the people going both up and down the staircase. And the lighting is very effective as well. I wonder how it would have looked if you had tilted the camera or changed position so the staircase was more on a diagonal with the left hand top curving higher into the top left corner of the image. I have tried to do this many times and yours is much more successful.
Erik Rosengren	- --Two strong leading lines, the banister wall and the stair leading edges. The foreground couple show a sense of movement. My only suggestion would be to burn in the background to darken the back wall as I find it a slight distraction.
Ann Schonlau	Hard to capture a subject like this but you did a good job capturing the essence of the image. Nice technical work.

Member Bio

Guy Davies - Biography Although I started in photography as a boy in 1946, and was soon developing and printing my own films, I really did not get serious until 1989 when I joined a camera club. I then realised just how very ordinary my pictures were! I started to enter club competitions and to listen carefully to the critiques, with the result that my photography gradually improved. In 2003 I decided to try the international exhibition scene and was pleasantly surprised to get some acceptances. This led on to joining the PSA and aiming for star recognition as well as trying to achieve FIAP acceptances. In March 2009 I was awarded the AFIAP distinction, and in September 2009 I was awarded PPSA. Also in March 2009 I was successful in achieving the ARPS distinction of the Royal Photographic Society. I lived on the south coast of England between Portsmouth & Southampton for about 30 years, working in the aircraft industry (jet engine control systems), having previously worked in aerodynamics and then flight test in other parts of the country. Now retired, I live close to where I was born, in the north-east near Middlesbrough. The scenery here is beautiful and my wife Paula and I both enjoy getting out to take pictures. I can be reached at guy-davies at gdpix.co.uk My preference is for landscapes but I also love waterfalls and seascapes. I have tried photographing people too, but only in the environment, not in the studio. Until early 2004 I shot slides on a Nikon F90 (N90 in US), but now use a Nikon D300 digital SLR camera. I find that changing to digital capture has released my inhibitions as I am now much more willing to try out shots as experiments, whereas with film, I was always conscious of the cost. I don't claim any greater success rate than with film, but it's much more fun!