Morecambe Contrast

Morecambe Contrast, originally uploaded by Bay Photographic.

Having taken this a few weeks ago, on a rare bright day in August, I was a bit disappointed with the final result after running it through Photomatix and CS2 with Topaz Adjust. As the title suggests, the point of the photograph was the contrast between the old bandstand and the recently redeveloped Midland Hotel in Morecambe. I had hoped to draw attention to the graffitti scrawled all over the bandstand and the weeds forcing their way through the ground in front of it, while at the same time pointing the lines of sight in the image towards the gleaming Art Deco hotel.
In the original version, the graffitti was a bit lost and the Midland lacked any real punch, so the picture, instead of showing the paradox that is Morecambe, looked a little like Blackpool with a few weeds.
So I downloaded Topaz Vivacity and filtered the original file with it.
I've always been a bit nervous of sharpening. Used delicately it can help low res images look like they were taken with a plate camera. Getting too free with it can make a perfectly good image look like it was taken with a mobile phone.
Having been an enthusiastic supporter of Topaz Adjust since I tripped over it on a web forum earlier this year I had high hopes for Vivacity.
And I was not disappointed. The image now makes sense. The contrast between the two sides of Morecambe's character jumps out of the frame as it was meant to originally.
And it doesn't look like it has been deliberately sharpened at all.
Which is rather the point.