Next to my office, at the corner of Pine and Jefferson in downtown Fort Collins, a new mural has been painted in the last year by Shaunie B, and I had been looking for an opportunity to take a photo of it. As I walked to my office on this particular day, someone had drawn geometric patterns with chalk on the ground in front of the mural- an excellent addition! This became my favorite image of the week.
Mural with Chalk
iPhone 12 Pro
Digital Darkroom. This image involved a lot of editing. I started with a crop and geometry adjustments, cutting out cars and removing lens distortion to give the wall right angles again. For the image as a whole, I played around with settings a lot. I increased exposure by half-a-stop, also increasing contrast (+27), whites (+48) and dehaze (+40). I lowered shadows (-22) and blacks (-26). I wanted the image to have punch.
I then created two separate masks. For the wall, I used a linear gradient and increased shadows (+100!), whites (+10) and clarity (+13). The colors didn’t need any extra saturation- the original artist took care of that already!
I used a radial filter on the chalk circles. I increased whites (+25), decreased blacks (-39), and gave the saturation an extra pop (+55) (the chalk was a bit faded).
WIRR stands for Weekly Image Rich Ruh. This regular feature on Das Has von Ruh will show and describe my favorite photo created during this weekly period. My weeks start on Mondays, as does the WIRR. I’m hoping to include commentary on the story, the setting, the specs, or the sentiments, depending on the circumstances.
Das Haus von Ruh 