Sonar

Returning to Bank Underground Station and updating a shot that I last attempted two years ago, this image was captured a few minutes after the station opened and as one of the first Central Line trains of the morning was continuing on its way towards the West End.

My aim when reshooting this image was to capture a cleaner and more detailed finish, as well as a darker and moodier presentation of the London Underground. Beyond this, I wanted to convey a streamlined and graceful sense of motion of a train as its carriages curve around the station’s platform, which I thought contrasted nicely with the industrial aspect of the platform, where panelling along the roof had been removed and where piping and wires were now exposed. Where my previous take had relied on my camera balancing on one of the platform seats to remain steady, this image was captured with a miniature tripod which allowed for a sharper shot, and which also made it possible to widen the focal length to 14mm and to take in much more of both the platform and the moving train.

The workflow when shooting and editing was broken down into several phases. I began by bracketing nine exposures of the platform while it was empty, later using luminosity masks in Photoshop to blend my brighter exposures for the shadows and my darker exposures for the highlights, while significantly toning down the midtones and pushing for a much more muted finish along the platform to contrast with the light and energy from the train. I then spent about 45 minutes shooting a number of trains as they pulled into and out of the station, eventually settling on a five-second exposure of a departing train with the ISO lowered to 50 and the exposure adjusted down by one stop.

Unlike the smooth and progressive motion of many subway systems overseas, London Underground’s Central Line trains go clattering along their platforms quite haphazardly. This makes editing them much more challenging: reflections from the platform lights are inconsistent, lights inside the carriages’ windows jarringly start and stop as the train moves, and defined reds and whites along the train become diluted into a faded burgundy. To correct this, I had to spend much of the editing stage copying, cloning and patch-tooling the train until its motion looked seamless. Extracting the train from its original exposure using the Pen Tool, I then used Nik’s Silver Efex Pro to lower the midtone and shadow structure and to increase the Soft Contrast, which helped to emphasise the smooth sense of motion from the train.

Along the platform, I thought it might be interesting to emphasise the subtle shades of grey from the tiles on the ground, which form a pattern as they zigzag into the distance and which seemed to create a pattern of leading diagonal lines alongside the train. These were again extracted using the Pen Tool, and my darker exposures applied specifically to these tiles, with my brighter exposures gently blended into the brighter tiles to play up the contrast and to brighten the "Bank" sign at the upper-left of the frame, which I thought fellow Londoners might enjoy.

The colour-grading stage was largely achieved using Hue/Saturation, Colour Balance, Selective Colour and Curves adjustments, all of which were geared towards a darker and colder finish along the platform to offset the bright and vibrant tone of the train. Most of this phase also focused on finding the right shade of red for the train, with a hint of magenta along the underside of the carriage and gentle traces of cyan in the shadows to blend with the colder tones along the platform. For the platform, I then used small amounts of the Low Key and Pro Contrast filters inside Nik’s Colour Efex Pro, which helped to darken the overall mood and to give the floor more definition and texture.

Finally, I used the Skew and Distort Tools to correct the image’s alignment so that the darker tiles along the platform in the immediate foreground would align horizontally with the lower edge of the frame. This wasn’t absolutely necessary, but it’s a detail I believe viewers’ eyes will notice, if only subconsciously.

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Posted by Otto Berkeley on 2017-05-25 04:45:03

Tagged: , London , England , Britain , UK , BankStation , Underground , LondonUnderground , Train , Carriage , Subway , Metro , Travel , Commute , Journey , Tube , Speed , Fast , Blurred , Motion , Platform , Empty , Waiting , Red