Celebrating Freedom, a photo from Ohio, Midwest

Photographer's Note

After posting my two photos of the Berlin Wall, seen on different continents within two months of each other this year (see here and here), I just had a third sighting of a piece of the Wall this past weekend. I am thinking that this is quite a coincidence and so I am posting the third Wall view today.

I am also posting this shot because I hope that someone on TE can give me some pointers on PPing to improve the color. This was taken in a dark hangar of the National Museum of the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB (the “world’s largest and oldest aviation museum” and a wonderful visit if you like airplanes and the history of aviation - it has one of just about everything, right up through the Stealth technology), and so the exposure was not the best, I did not use a flash and the artificial lighting has made the hue very yellow-brownish. Is there a way I can manipulate the colors in PS Elements 3 to make this more natural-looking? I have not had any experience to speak of yet with manipulating colors. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

This diorama gives a good idea of the size of the Wall and its rounded cap, which made mounting and scrambling over it particularly difficult (even if there were no bullets flying in your direction at the time). The cap is certainly a re-creation and three of the panels may be, as well - the display did not say.

The Trabant adds a nice touch, I think. From Wikipedia: The Trabant was produced in East Germany from 1957-1991. It was the most common vehicle in East Germany and was also exported to other socialist countries. Despite its poor performance (it took 21 sec to go from 0 to 100 km/h (62 mph)) and small, smoky 25 horsepower (19 kW) two-stroke engine, the car has come to be regarded with affection as a symbol of East Germany and of the fall of Communism, as many East Germans streamed into West Berlin and West Germany in their Trabants after the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It was in production without any significant change for nearly 30 years (the Wiki article has much more info, if you are so inclined).

Technical: I didn’t do much, just cropping and sharpening, as I didn’t know what to do (see above).

JPlumb, alonsote ha puntuado esta nota como útil.

Critiques | Translate

theswedish (680) 2006-12-11 22:17

Where did the Trabant go? They used to be all over northern Sweden when the Russian workers came to pick the fruit. Once in a while you still see them. I added a workshop for you. Thanks for sharing.

[workshop] [compare] +

JPlumb (3159) 2006-12-12 7:55

Hi Jackie, good shot, though the colours are off by a bit. I had a try with PS Elements 3 and found the exercise somewhat frustrating. I had some luck but I still have a bit of a brownish tinge, and the writing and graffitti on the wall has gone orange now. I'm liking Roger's work in this case a lot better. This is now notice to myself that I am going to need to look at an investment in Photoshop CS2.

Thanks, John

zephyr2004 (2) 2007-04-17 21:40

Hi Jackie,
I like all the notes and a good series on the wall. I tried to fix the colors in Picasa2 and it's a single touch on the neutral color picker of the tuning tab to get almost the same results as the workshop photo. At that point you can export the picture and then work on it in other editors. I presently use 4 editors depending on what I want to do and include Picasa at some point, I haven't found one that does everything nicely without spending too much time learning the intricacies of the editor. Maybe I'm lazy.
regards,
JJ