In front of Carnegie Institution for Science (Before & After)

One of the mornings, I has some time to kill before meeting my colleagues for breakfast. I was wandering around my hotel neighborhood in DC, observing and shooting some images. The vases in front of Carnegie Institution for Science are my favorite from that day. I was drawn to the shape and details in those two symmetrically placed vases. I decided to close up on one of them, to show those details. It wasn’t until I opened the images on my computer that I noticed how naturally duotone the image is. It was around 8 am, and in the shade. There is some delicate blue and yellow shades on the material they are made of. Those two colors are also present in the background. I wanted to accent them. In the process, I inverted their presence a little bit, but yellow in highlight and blue in shadows just looked better. It was a taunting task to find the balance between the two. I also pushed the Clarity almost to the end to make sure the details are all well visible. I also shifted the White Balance a little bit, and used some Local Adjustment to even the exposure on the vase. All those tweaks helped to achieve the sun-shadow effect I remembered seeing in that moment in that place. And you probably notice a tighter crop to put more stress on the large handles.