This was taken in a store in Florence. There was a beautiful staircase made of steel and glass and I really liked the reflections and being able to see the people going up and down the stairs. I took several shots and chose this one because of the way the woman was framed in the gap and the because of the legs of the man coming down the stairs, which I thought made a good composition. (See the original image below). As I was working on it, the title ‘The Encounter’ came to mind as it implies a relationship between the man and the woman, which may or may not exist.
Post capture treatment consisted of cropping the image to a square format and using transform to straighten everything up. The Nik Paper Toner was then used with a layer mask to bring back the colour on the woman and the man’s legs. A series of Viveza, levels, curves, hue /saturation, brightness / contrast and Darken / Lighten Centre layers were used to adjust the lighting to the way I wanted it. The texture was of some dry, cracked clay ground.
Finally the image was sharpened using high pass filter.
This image has had 17 international acceptances including the 103rd London Salon of Photography 2014 (England), the 152nd Edinburgh International Exhibition of Photography 2014 (Scotland), the RPS International Images for Screen Exhibition 2014 (UK), 121st Toronto International Salon of Photography 2014 (Canada), 96th Scottish International Salon of Photography 2019 (Scotland), Malmo International Exhibition of Photography 2019 (Sweden) and a Ribbon at the Tallaght International Salon of Photographic Art 2014 (Ireland),
Nikon D800, 50mm Nikkor Prime lens, ISO 200, f/3.5, 1/250 sec.
