Christopher Harry's photostream

Apart from my usual processing for colour, contrast and detail in PS and Lightroom, I used a +4 close-up filter on my 18-55mm nikkor lens for this shot just to see how it would work out. The shallow depth of field seemed to work out for this image, creating a soft, silky feel on the outside petals and a nice depth-fade into the background. These flowers are always something to look forward to during late April-early May in Beijing.

Taken in Zhu Ge Village in China's Zhejiang province.

I used fill light to bring out some detail and added a slight vignetting effect in LR to accentuate the contrast in lighting. Both smudging and smart blur were applied in PS to smooth out a few jagged pixels on the peripheries.

I thought this image would complement the daytime photo of the same village below. The original image was much flatter in terms of contrast and with fewer details, but I think the post-processing here better reflects the actual scene here as perceived by the naked eye. The overall composition is cropped in slightly too close and full, but the cropping helped take out some extraneous and distracting elements.

Best viewed large.

Taken in Zhu Ge Village in China's Zhejiang province. Although this typical South Yangzi River architecture has a very pleasing aesthetic, the combination of white, cloudless skies and white-coloured buildings presents a unique challenge in terms of capturing a proper exposure while retaining detail. I used clarity in LR here to bring out the detail in the background vegetation which then created a slightly exaggerated contrast to the building walls, although this effect also compensated for lack of lens sharpness and helped to bring out texture and detail. This photo was taken at 250 ISO, yet there were still some choppy pixels in the reflected sky below, so I applied smudge in PS to smooth out these rough edges.

After taking several shots of this beautiful dragonfly while visiting Hong Kong Park, I settled on this highly-cropped version to upload, which is not too bad considering I was shooting with an 18-200 mm lens. Colour and contrast adjustments were made in PS and lightroom, along with a bit of clarity and detail enhancement, as well as a vignetting effect to cast the subject into greater focus. Noise reduction was also applied to help ameloriate the effects of low-lighting and high ISO.

Another work of graffiti I discovered on the south bank of Tonghui River in Beijing. Very slight vignetting and tone and contrast modifications were made to bring out the depth and definition. Had to crop a bit close at the top as the wall ended and there were too many extraneous elements above it. This one appears to be a representation of a porcupine fish and I would guess by the technique, location, and subject matter, that it was done by the same artist as the work below. The signature tag appears to be ASA Ren.