Elliptic Lines
Just a photo of a huge dome in a shopping mall. The good thing about shopping malls at this time of the year is definitely the Christmas decoration. There are lights all over, different colors, lots of contrasts, etc. So I’m having a great time taking pictures of these infrastructures. This dome is very beautiful not just because of its size, but also because of its shape. Apart from that, it has lots of strobes which flash constantly, and at night this makes a very nice effect if you look at it from the outside. Needless to say that from the outside, this dome looks like a cristal egg. 
I’m not kidding, it does! But by saying this I don’t mean it is ugly or has an awkward shape. Not at all. It’s the opposite actually! The glass and the strobes give it a sparkling look, and the shape resembles an egg, so I get this image of a somewhat “cristal egg” when I look at it from the outside.
On the inside you can see it has a wooden structure, very appealing for photography given the pillars oval shape and given their wooden texture. In this photo, the contrast between the the wood and the glass is, in my opinion, really cool. The windows exhibit different color tones, due to the reflected strobes and Christmas lighting, since this glass dome works like a big mirror, reflecting every bit of light.
One great thing about this kind of photos – where only a partial part of a subject (in this case a structure) is captured -, is that many of them may seem very abstract at the first glance. I mean, in the first couple of seconds we look at it and our brain automatically starts to figure out what it is. Of course that it’s just a matter of scarce seconds, sometimes even instantly, but it’s cool nonetheless that we get a bit puzzled when we look at a photo for the first time. If I had photographed the whole thing, the dome, the floor, people and so on, it would be pretty obvious, but by shooting only the dome I guess I’ve played a bit with the viewer’s perception.
The post-edition work on this one was almost non-existent. Adjusted curves, saturation and contrast, and cleaned some strobes.
Date and location:
Date: 12-XII-2009
Country: Portugal
City: Almada
Place: Almada Forum
Exif:
Camera: Nikon D200
Lens: Tokina AF 11-16mm f/2.8 (IF) AT-X Pro DX
Exposure: 1/10; 1/6; 1/3; 0.7; 1.3
Aperture: f/6.3
ISO: 200
Focal distance: 16mm
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey dude, awesome photo you got here. I’m hooked at these colors!!!
How do you get those colors … so … alive?
Hi Paulo! This is HDR photography! With HDR you don’t have under or overexposed areas, so the photo simulates pretty much what the human eye can see. Plus, the colors tend to get more vibrant when you know how to edit the photo on your HDR software and afterwards on Photoshop. It’s all about the contrasts and the way you tweak them. Some even consider it to be a form of visual art, although I won’t get into this controversial stuff… The truth is that an HDR is a unique piece of work… I mean, you can in fact be shooting something already shot over and over again throughout the years, like for instance, the Eiffel Tower, but if you shoot it in HDR, you’ll probably get an image different from any other. Though people have seen thousands of photos of it, they will look at yours and think that it has a little something that makes it kinda special… That’s HDR!