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Thread: Goodbye Tayside House

  1. #1
    Moderator Donald's Avatar
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    Goodbye Tayside House

    This does not try to be a fine art image. Instead it is a documentary/history piece. I am no cityscape or architectural photographer, so I'd welcome opinion and comment.

    On my own website, I've got a series of galleries called 'My Scotland'. Those wouldn't be complete without an image of this horrendous 1970s-build monstrosity, which is about to disappear in a few weeks - much to everyone's delight. Because since 1991 this has, in terms of my work, been HQ. It was the administrative HQ of the local government authority for which I work - Tayside Regional Council and then Dundee City Council following local government reorganisation in Scotland in 1995.

    I was never based in this building but I spent many happy (am I mad?) hours on the 7th floor at meetings etc.

    Tayside House is coming down as part of the major redevelopment of the waterfront area in the city of Dundee. It won't come down in one big bang, as the main railway route north to Aberdeen and south to Edinburgh/London etc, runs directly underneath it. So it has to come down brick-by-brick.

    So this has been part of my life since 1991 and part of Dundee's since the 1970's ........ soon to be gone.

    I'd welcome your thoughts as to whether it is a reasonable social/architectural history document.

    Goodbye Tayside House
    Canon 40D, EF 24-70 f2.8 L @ 32mm. ISO100. 1/45s @f11

  2. #2
    Daisy Mae's Avatar
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    Re: Goodbye Tayside House

    It is a very important piece of social documentation Donald...and the tint seems to suit Dundee well

    I could happily shoot many architects of the 60's and 70's for inflicting all these lines and blocks upon us.

    The edges on the roof and spire to the left seem very pixelated to my eye though .

  3. #3
    victor's Avatar
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    Re: Goodbye Tayside House

    Donald,

    Having driven past this for over 30 years whilst living and working in Dundee and visits home, for my wife from the deep south east I feel it is A very strong image.

    Yes this area has changed sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad over the past 30 years. Lets hope the "City Fathers" have got it right with the proposed re-development.

    Regards

    David

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    Re: Goodbye Tayside House

    Nice historical shot.

    The 70's in many countries were the same - low on money and a need to provide services so the best options then were get them up as cheaply and as quickly as possible. Government architects at the time were given very little leeway as even slight elegance had a cost to it. Add to that that designs had to go through levels of more senior architects (read vision lost architects), the final build was usually just a box.

  5. #5
    Moderator Dave Humphries's Avatar
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    Re: Goodbye Tayside House

    Hi Donald,

    While it's a valid documentary photo, I'm not sure of the relevance of the pink tint.

    Is it just me, or does anyone else see sharpening halos on the sky from the scaffold poles?
    (Have to view in LyteBox at 1:1 to see them)

    But you did say it wasn't a fine art image, so perhaps I'm being unduly critical.

    Cheers,

  6. #6
    Moderator Donald's Avatar
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    Re: Goodbye Tayside House

    Thank you all.

    Re Dave's points:
    I don't normally pick one of the preset tones from Silver Efex Pro 2, preferring to set my own tone in cases where I use it. That just confirms I am right. This was the #17 tone and I wasn't totally convinced about it myself.

    The haloes came in right after capture sharpening. I saw them on the church spire. There is no other sharpening applied. Very annoying.

  7. #7
    Moderator Dave Humphries's Avatar
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    Re: Goodbye Tayside House

    Quote Originally Posted by Donald View Post
    The haloes came in right after capture sharpening. I saw them on the church spire. There is no other sharpening applied. Very annoying.
    Hi Donald,

    This is so unlike your normal stuff, there wasn't a decimal point in wrong place on radius was there?
    My thinking is that capture sharpening is usually sub one pixel and after downsizing (2:1 or 3:1), that should be invisible in the final web image, which is why a final sharpen at ~ 100%, 0.3px is usually (read "always") necessary.

    My workflow;
    I never bother with capture sharpening these days, it allows more latitude to use higher iso without having to noise reduce because the downsize also eradicates a lot of noise, so you sharpen only image content and not noise and can use a lower threshold. However, this is because I shoot exclusively for web use, which has the compulsory downsize step in PP, I rarely print, if I did, then I'd skip the downsize and have to sharpen the fullsize image. Occasionally I do both and save with different filenames, but I do the web first, undo a few steps, then save a 'print sharpened' fullsize version.

    Cheers,

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