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Congratulations to Hamish Beeston, Bristol, UK who has won the November PFRE photographer of the month. Another UK winner! Wow, these UK shooters can't be stopped!
Here are the contestants that the jurors awarded points to this month:
Don't forget to check out the comments in the PFRE Flickr contest group by jurors and others. There is a lot of good commentary on the photos this month.
Here are Hamish's comments:
Many thanks for all your votes - I’m really chuffed to have won this month, especially when there were some fantastic images in the field.
A few notes re the shot.
Most of the hard work in this case was done for me - the property is an exquisitely-renovated mews house in London, with a fantastic level of finish. The walls and ceilings are polished plaster, which gives a lovely reflective shine from the in-set lighting. I also really liked all the horizontal / vertical lines in the space and the crazy staircase, so I was keen to capture an image that was quite geometric and stylized.
Technically, I shot a bracketed series and then fused just two (which were very close in exposure - 1 sec and 0.6 sec @ f/11, ISO 100, AWB, 18mm on my trusty old Canon 5D) using the Exposure Fusion feature in Photomatix Pro. Looking back at the workflow now, I could probably have just worked from a single RAW file as the fused image looked a little unreal with its boosted shadows and I ended up crushing them back down in LR!
The main work then was to add a grad filter to the left hand side of the image to reduce the glare, remove the blue / purple daylight casts and straighten the whole thing up. This last bit I did initially in LR and then in Photoshop where I typically use the Perspective Crop tool to tweak out the corners until everything is bang on. And yes, I do get a bit obsessive… I also straighten pictures on other people’s walls!
Back in LR, I used the spot removal tool to remove two smoke alarms from the ceiling and dirt spots from the floor. Finally, I added a small amount of sharpening and noise reduction.
Congratulations Hamish. A mighty fine shot. You had me fooled into thinking this was some kind of Beverley Hills Condo though! Glad to see the us Brits keeping hold of the winners title.
Hamish,
Beautiful image, I love the composition to highlight the staircase and yet give one a hint of the flow in the adjacent space.
Congratulations!
Ethan
What an amazing capture, Hamish! I enjoyed your image a great deal and viewed it often during the contest. Congrats on a well-deserved win!
Congrats Hamish!
Wow, I'm surprised this was done with exposure fusion! I never would've guessed that given the great quality of light, but it's a good reminder that you don't always need to use strobes to get a great interior shot. It just takes the knowledge and experience to know when they're not needed. And a strong eye for composition goes a long way too. 🙂
Congratulations!
Hurrah another one for the UK! Excellent image Hamish, it certainly had my vote!
Great job Hamish! Worth of any top publication in my opinion.
My favourite! Congrats for your outstanding work, Hamish, well deserved award.
Nice one Hamish! It's good to see a one-point perspective image being included in real estate work; so often it's the shot across the room which seems to get used in a listing. This is such a strong composition which I am sure suits the prestigious subject perfectly.
Congrats Hamish - I knew that was the winner the moment I saw it posted. Beautiful job!
Thanks everyone - very much appreciated. Special thanks also to Larry for his huge work running PFRE, from which I have learnt so much and to Simon Maxwell for crucial photographic advice and support!