Maybe our love with catch like fire, as it burns through me.
Part of the lyrics for the song, Beautiful Love, by The Afters. I just love the chorus part to bits - it reminds me of how the last rays of the sun illuminates the higher atmosphere like a burning torch, tearing through the falling darkness. Well here’s the video. [Edit]: The video uploader has disabled video embedding, so click here to watch the MTV. Thanks to Brandy for pointing it out 
Sorry for spamming YouTube videos lately, but there are really some nice songs out there 
I think the song fits this post’s theme very well! This evening photography series leverage heavily on Photoshopped effects - I’m aware that some people feels that Photoshopping is comparable to “faking the effects of the actual scene”, but I think it adds a unique dimension and perspective to the image. I didn’t blend in extra objects - what I did was to enhance the intended effects and remove some flaws and dust speckles. The photos are presented in a “before and after” format, you can click on them to view the larger ones in a lightbox.
Sunset at my neighbourhood, #1 - The main “evening glow” effect on the road surface is enhanced by adding brightness to the area via color dodge, I faded it off at the sides a little to make it more natural. I’ve tried to create a pseudo-HDR effect, by darkening the sky a little and brightening to row of shophouses on the left. To achieve such an effect, the most important thing is you need to underexpose the photo - it preserves more details and colour information than whitewashed ones.
Sunset at my neighbourhood, #2 - Another heavily underexposed photo taken right outside my home 
thankfully there wasn’t many cars on the road at that time, so I get to deal with less shawdows. I artifically created the glow effect on the road, I find it too dark at first. I just realised that I forgot to take the shadow of the house on the road, thus the slightly weird lighting effect. But heck, it’s better than the original one.
Sunset at my neighbourhood, #3 - I decided to add a little bit of dramatic effect to this photo, so I vigenetted the photo a little. Darkened edges near the bottom is pretty obvious, but I like it the way it made the road a little darker and blue-er. Since there are obstructive overhead wires, I’ve ditched the color burn method to darken to sky but has opted to use the Shadows and Highlights options (accessible under Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highligths… )
Sunset at my neighbourhood, #4 - This photo is taken above the monsoon drain behind my neighbourhood, and a local resident is smart enough to transform it into a commercial plant nursery and he built a bridge across the drain for easier access. If you’ve noticed that there are actually quite a few electric pylons that surrounds my neighbourhood - there’s one in a previous photo and now here’s another. I’ve used Shadows and Highlights to artifically expand the dynamic range, plus used color dodge to increase the brightness of the potted plants in the foreground. If you’ve noticed, a did a little cropping to remove tha annoying branches to the left in the original photo.
Sunset over the expressway, #1 - My neighbourhood is connected to the rest of the township with a highway - a pretty huge one. 17 years back when we first moved in, there wasn’t even a proper road that lead to our new home, but just a muddy, narrow and poorly maintained stretch of tarmac. Things have surely changed a lot over the years! Now it’s transformed into a bustling highway, carrying traffic from the township to the capital, Kuala Lumpur.
Sunset over the expressway, #2 - This photo is one of the least photoshopped one. The only reason why I’ve included it in the series is partilaly based of my love for roadwork and construction - if you look carefully at the background, there’s actually 3 flyovers stacking over each other, with the topmost one still under construction wow, amazing isn’t it? Anyway I used the Patch tool to remove the lens flare at the bottom, bumped up the highlights and I’m done!
Sunset over the expressway, #3 - This is the only landscape photo in the entire series. I think I’m taking way too much portraits. I liked how the expressway panned out towards the horizon, and of course, the glowing sun in the background. As you can see, I’ve managed to recover quite a handful of details from underexposed areas, although there’s a little more noise than usual. I choose not to use Photoshop’s noise reduction (under Filter > Noise > Noise Reduction) because it actually blurs out quite a lot of details, and this defeats the entire purpose of underexposing the photo. If I get a dSLR next time, the results will be better since most dSLRs have inbuilt noise reduction technology before the image is saved.
That’s all for this series, I hope you like it have a great Sunday, enjoy yourself! It’s a little late now, so I will not be responding to your comments until tomorrow. And oh I owe quite a lot of people comments on their blogs too… sorry to keep you guys waiting! Tomorrow, promise.
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21 responses to Evening Photography
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March 30th, 2008 at 4:01 am
once again, you do such wonderful things with your photographs, it is a real inspiration to come to your blog and feel all excited about all the different things one can do with Photoshop.
Check out letti’s last blog post: Another Trip to Dallas
March 30th, 2008 at 10:44 am
The pictures are so wonderful it makes me so calm after seeing it. I don’t know whether it’s just me or what, your pictures seem to have a soothing effect towards me. I’m not being dramatic here lol.
I like how the pictures turned out after being photoshopped. It’s just like those in the magazines. I also want to get a dslr myself but the good ones are around 10k is it? That’ll definitely burn me and not just a hole in my pocket. 
Check out Melissa’s last blog post: Ps, I Love You
March 30th, 2008 at 11:33 am
by using certain lense filters,u can actually achieve the results without photoshop right?
Check out LogicYuan’s last blog post: Weekend Movie and Dining - Awake and Mexican!
March 30th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Such beautiful photography. The 4th one down is my favorite.
Its amazing what photoshop can do.
That YouTube video is no longer available. =/
March 30th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Such beautiful photography. The 4th one down is my favorite.
Its amazing what photoshop can do.
That YouTube video is no longer available. Awww. =/
Check out Brandy’s last blog post: Love and Dislike.
March 30th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Ooh i love the before and after Photoshop series you’ve done. You’ve got such a good eye for photography and your Photoshop skills are just brilliant. Nice one, Teddy!
March 30th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
letti: Hey there Letti thanks for your compliments
I really appreciate them!
Melissa: Woah I never knew my photos are so impactful! When I was taking the photos the other day over the expressway, I can smell all the soot and exhaust, hear the incessant honks of impatient drivers… it wasn’t exactly a calming and soothing experience afterall, but I realised that you can create those impression by darknening the photo and adding a little dramatic lighting effect
heheh. Lol even the lousiest photos in photography magazines are way nicer than the nicest ones over here… I’m still quite an amateur for photography! Anyway currently many good dSLRs are going around MYR2999~5999, it’s actually quite affordable!
LogicYuan: Yes of course! There are warming and cooling filters that you can use to create the effects, without even touching Photoshop. Too bad I’m using a regular consumer camera and not a dSLR. Anyway those filters are luxuries to splurge on, so I usually will stick to Photoshopping. Hah.
Brandy: Hey there thanks for dropping by! Anyway I just realised that the person who uploaded the MTV has recently disabled video embedding (how irritating, argh)… thanks for informing me! Now I’ve added a link to the MTV.
thecoffeesnob: Thanks for your compliments, I’m really very flattered to hear them. I’m not really experienced with both photography and Photoshop yet
I’m still learning the ropes!
March 31st, 2008 at 1:44 am
Amazing shots…. and photoshop really does wonders for photographs!! I should seriously start to photoshoping my photos more often.
Sorry for my recent short comments, I have so little time. Bah.
Check out Ivy’s last blog post: Why Do You Blog?
March 31st, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Thanks for your sweet compliments Ivy
no worries about short comments, I thank you for making an effort to drop by even when you’re so busy… I’m honoured! Take care and all the best for the upcoming papers. 
March 31st, 2008 at 4:36 pm
wow….vast different in the pictures..u r getting better and better coussie
March 31st, 2008 at 10:33 pm
This sure is motivating!
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Hey, amazing set! Perhaps my favourite,
I love the way you composed ‘em, always with a brighter center, =) (which works perfectly fine with the vignetting you applied)
First - Nice lens flare, I think should be straighten tho. =) Love the gradient of the sky you added and the ‘evening glow’, nice!
Second - Very nice artificial glow over the road, no, it’s not weird IMO, quite natural if you didn’t note that down, =p
Third - LOVE your vignetting, =p I can never get them right.
Expressway series - Very nice subject and composition, love these kind of photos and I definitely would do some when I can drive, =p (Err, in Brunei, our houses are usually quite far away from the main road/fly over, haha. I do have one some 2km from my house, tho =D)
I especially like the first and second, and perhaps you can try a slow shutter speed one? =)
Personally, what I hate when dealing with way underexposed photos is the noise and the weird colour tones, it’s especially obvious when you’re dealing with living subjects, especially human. =p Anyhow, I recently found a really nice noise reduction program, you MUST use it. =p Noiseware rawks dude.
I think it maps the noise pattern of cameras (maybe for dSLR only, tho) and thus can apply the noise reduction with pin point precision. =) And erm, dSLR in-built NR (noise reduction) is generally bad, they work in the same way as software do (and they doesn’t appear to be better), and you can’t undo it, so yea, not recommended by most pros I came across, best is to do it in the PC (just 1-3 clicks anyway). =p Even for my ISO 1600 photo, Noiseware handle em perfectly. =p Nearly noise-free after I use Noiseware, hehe, ISO 3200 is destructive tho. 
Check out ingSiang’s last blog post: 29.03.08 - A New Project
April 6th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
@ingSiang:
Woah, this is one of the longest comment I’ve ever seen! Thank you sooo much for your time and effort - I really appreciate it!
First - Yea there’s a little bit of distortion, especially in the vertical axes
I always get that when I take portrait shots! The gradient of the sky is added by using Photoshop to draw a vertical gradient (that fades downwards), and then blending it with the background using color burn.
Second - The more I look at the glow the more fake it looks to me! My bad for not including shadows, but I’m too lazy for that
heh.
Third - Actually most of my photos have some extent of vignetting, I think it has something to do with my camera’s sensor. The vignetting effect is further enhance and highlighted when I darken the corners… it’s not really an intended effect, but it turned out pretty well!
Expressway series - I think it’s actually good town planning that ensures that houses in Brunei are not too close to major throughfares. Unlike in Brunei, our goverment sucks particularly at town planning and grasps any space available to widen a road into some biga$$ expressway
and plus adding a toll plaza on it so they can milk the money out of the users. I would love to photograph the expressways in Brunei - I can imagine them being wrapped around with lots and lots of trees 
I use a lousy point-and-shoot camera, so there’s really no control over the shutter speed… I think I’m getting a dSLR soon, but I have to do the research first
Yea I hated colour noise - as far as I know, Photoshop’s built-in noise reduction only works for some photos and not all… and it sucks particularly at reducing colour noise. A helluva details are wiped out! I think I’ve heard about the software you’ve recommended in some PC mag, I think I’ll be checking it out shortly!
When I am in my college’s photographic society, I do handle dSLRs but I’m a total noob back then! I only stuck to AP or SP modes only, nothing more than that, haha! I didn’t even really dare to touch the ISO settings!
April 6th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Haha, there’s nothing with knowing nothing other than AP and SP, it’s already pretty darn good, and they both did their job well. =p I use AP almost 100% of the time, PASM is the only 4 mode I would ever touch, since P (programmed, auto) isn’t really something I would opt for and M is too much for a 100% digital user like me (probably after A level, when I have all the time I need, I’ll give it a go), so it’s always S or A for me, and since most of the photos I took are indoor one (little sports), so yea, A mode for me, =D
ISO is something you’ll play around with a lot when you get your dSLR. =p To take long exposure shot on your P&S, I think you can wait till it’s really dark, then set it up on a tripod, then tune your ISO to 100, and shoot, that works I think. =) Quite sure your camera has manual ISO setting, right?
Yea dude, get dSLR! =D If you need info, just let me know, =p Not a pro but at least I can give you what I know. =p Go for a D60 + the new VR lens, good buy! HAHA. Seriously, =p if your budget is VERY limited, like me!~
Check out ingSiang’s last blog post: 04.04.08 - I Reached My Ultimate Tensile Stress
April 6th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
@ingSiang:
Lol but I still suck at it! While I used the AP mode more often than the SP one, but I remembered using SP a lot during a sports day shoot and all I got was super underexposed crappy photos. Luckily there’s photoshop around and the photos are of relatively high resolution that they still managed to survive the cut and get into the school magazine.
Same here, I would never have touched the freaking M, it’s the hardest one unless I have some experience with it
haha. P is the best of new comers - I’ll most probably be sticking to P for the first week or so and then move in to AP or SP later.
dSLRs are great cameras I think! No matter how much the manufacturers claim that their digital cameras (those consumer type ones) are shock, splash, water or whatever proof… dSLR gives the most flexibility and functionality. Speaking of which, the dSLR I’m aiming to get must be able to shoot on RAW format (and has to be recognised by photoshop! Some early primitive RAW formats are not recognised by the all-mighty PS)… and it’s better to have auto exposure bracketing (hey that’s where my HDR fever kicks in! heheh).
Thanks for the offer! When I’ve done some basic research and narrowed down my list I might be asking for you advice
teehee. Thanks anyway!
P.S. yea my camera has ISO settings but they’re so damn limited. Not bad for a 3yr old camera!
April 7th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
That is because the aperture can’t match the shutter speed you set, I think. If there’s limited light and you kick your shutter speed to 1/2000th in the SP mode, your aperture or ISO maximized and still wouldn’t reach the perfect exposure, then your photo would underexposed. =p If you need bracketing, then D40 is not your thing already, =\ You need to opt for Canon 400 or 450D,
Check out ingSiang’s last blog post: 04.04.08 - I Reached My Ultimate Tensile Stress
April 7th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
@ingSiang:
I just realised that you replied me comment almost 24 hours after I’ve posted it (although you’re 2 minute early), cool
I think I set the shutter speed way too fast so in the end even at very high ISO the photo turned out to be horribly underexposed with a truckload of noise.
Thanks for the recommendation! I read this Sony dSLR mag today think that alpha200 is quite my cup of tea
April 11th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Great set of touched-up photos!
You can actually be a professional photographer, or a web designer, or a photo journalist, or … basically anything you’re good at.
Here is another inspiring source of photography on the web I found:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thiru/
April 11th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
@Jake:
but I don’t think I’m experienced enough to be a professional photographer. And to make it worse, I don’t even have a decent dSLR to shoot with!
Thank you
And thanks for the pluggie, it’s really nice! I love exploring random flickr streams… some of them are really hidden gems!
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April 6th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
[...] asked about how can I create the third evening photo in the Evening Photography set, so I’ve took some time to create this tutorial I hope you’ll like it! Anyway unlike [...]
April 13th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[...] in case you’re wondering, the pedestrian bridge ahead is the place where I’ve done the Evening Photography set. Locate photo in post [...]