Good Old Letterbox

During my stay in Poland I stumbled upon this very neat old but cool letterbox. Really amazing! I think that this a good candidate for the VFXY theme Communication. After all, letters are one of the very old forms of communicating.

In the letterbox is written LISTY which is Polish for LETTERS.

TECH-INFO: I was experimenting with my new Lensbaby Composer with plastic optic. Instead of a glass lens it's just plastic to simulate a bit the plastic cameras like the Holga. It has plenty of flare and chromatic abbreviations. I'm not sure if I like it a lot. Everything looks very dreamy and it's very hard to focus. More testing of this optic must be done in order to learn its strong side.

In Photoshop I wanted to enhance the letter box but after twiddling and fiddling with a bunch of adjustment layers I gave up. So I did what I love to do, using HDR techniques to reveal all details. The result is a hundred times better. The method is similar as for this image (1 RAW => DxO Optics Pro => multiple exposure => merging into HDR => Photomatrix for tone-mapping).

Afterwards I used a few adjustment curves and the channel mixer to desaturate and enhance it even more. Finally I added a dust texture which I got for free on the Really Japan photo blog. I hope you like the result.

Good Old Letterbox

comments (5)

613photo
United States
1 Mar 2009, 08:46

On this one I think I'd like to see some more contrast, and maybe a little darker on the whole. Composition -- well I think that usually when you're trying to do something more lo fi, like a Holga or whatever, many of those cameras and definitely that one would have a more square frame. I think that would have been a little more interesting. The frame here pretty much replicates the shape of the letterbox.

I like that dust layer.

LightningPaul: More contrast would fit but on the other hand this plastic optic, which is like a very very bad lens, does not yield much contrast at all. It would destroy a little it's character. I was not trying to emulate a Holga or anything else. Though the square is an excellent idea; unfortunately this kind of cropping is not possible anymore without cutting away parts of the letterbox (something I would hate to do). At the time of capturing I didn't think of that. I'm happy you like the dust layer. Many thanks for your opinion, I appreciate it a lot. It makes me think about the images.

Zebigleb
France
1 Mar 2009, 11:36

I like very much the use of Gaussian blur here, it gives a very artistic sight !!

LightningPaul: Many thanks! Though the blur is due to the plastic optic (so plastic lens); no blur is added during post processing; in contrary there is less. I'm happy you like the artistic sight.

Ilan
Israel
1 Mar 2009, 21:18

Don't know exactly why, but this letterbox looks like an angry face to me. With that green mouth of .. his?

LightningPaul: So be happy you are not a postman :-D
I think nobody want to remove or even touch this letterbox.

Bill Phillips
England
1 Mar 2009, 21:22

Have you seen Ingrid's(anniedog) series of pictures taken with a Holga? I think the real thing looks more natural somehow. This looks as if it has been processed.

LightningPaul: I have seen a few of her pictures. The look can be nice.
In this image I had no intention at all to emulate a Holga. I also have the impression that this plastic lens flares even more than the ones of other plastic lenses.
This weekend I have been shooting more with this lens, just to get familiar. When converting them into B/W it looks very soft and nice.
The image has been processed indeed. The blur around the letterbox is due to the Lensbaby effect. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

liDa
United Kingdom
6 Mar 2009, 19:01

wow, old good country, I hope you enjoyed your stay in PL.

the photo looks interesting.
the DOF confused me completely at first. the fence curves on the right and left side seem to be 'sticking out' of the photography, giving very misleading impression.
I really like it.

LightningPaul: Many thanks for your comment.

Poland is great country which I visit a few times a year. There are more images posted on my blog of abandoned factories of Zyrardow in Poland, which is 50km below Warsaw. Soon I'll post even more of them.

The DOF can be indeed very confusing because of the Lensbaby (see www.lensbaby.com) effect which blurs everything around the center. It adds some fantastic bokeh (one of the best ones actually).

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camera	NIKON D200
exposure mode	full manual
shutterspeed	1/60s
aperture	f/5.6
sensitivity	ISO200
focal length	50.0mm

LightningPaul