Wizarding World Eye Candy: My Best Shots

I've been fumbling around in Adobe Lightroom more lately, and it's made me fall in love with photo editing all over again. So last week I went through all of my Universal Potter photos, grabbed some favorites, and edited them up.

'Til now I've been doing most of my editing in a combination of iPhoto (for basic stuff) and Perfect Photo Suite 7. I still like Perfect Photo - it's amazing for detail work - but it's slow going with big batches, like convention pics. Lightroom, on the other hand, has this miraculous "presets" tool, which speeds up workflow a zillion percent, and has some extra fun features besides.

I'm really pleased with how these came out, so I hope you'll forgive the few repeats - though even those have been newly spruced up (and I think improved) in Lightroom. Enjoy!

My favorite architectural piece in either of the Potter areas. Gah, I love this fountain. 

That's an HDR shot, which gives it all that great texture. I love the colors, too: almost monochromatic, but with subtle teals and purples in the upper right corner.

 One of the winged boars perched high above the castle entrance.  

And my favorite castle shot, taken from the side:

It's tough to get a good shot of Hogwarts on a sunny day; the glare bleaches out all the color and tries to turn the whole thing into a silhouette. I did extreme boosts on color saturation, shadows, and detail for this one.

 A repeat, but now with more color:

One of the puppeteer performers:

The puppet shows (there are two) still manage to get me right in the feels, every time I see them. So, so good.

 The clock tower in Hogsmeade:

When the hour strikes that little door up there opens, and a carved owl comes out! Can't tell you how many visits it took before I noticed that.

 The Gringotts statue:

I didn't de-saturate the background; that's just a gray wall behind him. I boosted the color and clarity, and added a vignette. I love how vivid the gold looks, and the crisp lines on his face.

Hey, I just realized it's been entirely too long since I terrorized you guys with creepy dolls!

 Ahh, MUCH better.

This doll is on a high shelf - behind glass - inside the Bourgin and Burkes shop in Knockturn Alley. I love her, and I'm forever trying to get a good shot.

Now here's the creepy part (yes, we're just getting to it) - see how she's looking to the left in that shot? 

Now look at this one, taken with my cell phone on an earlier trip:

 Tell me that eye didn't move.

And then sleep sweet, y'all. :D

No, no, I won't leave you with that; here, have a pretty photo chaser: 

This shot is John's favorite. She's one of the back up singers (aka "Banshees") for Celestina Warbeck. I used Perfect Photo's "Focus" feature to create that subtle shaft of light on her face, like she's looking into a sunbeam. (Focus is one of the tools I haven't figured out how to recreate in Lightroom, btw, and it's incredibly useful.) Then I boosted her color and contrast in LR.

Another repeat, with a color and clarity boost:

And this:

 

I have hundreds of WWoHP pics sitting unedited in my iPhoto, because I haven't thought they were worth tweaking. I plucked this next one out on a whim, though, gave it a quick edit, and was surprised by how much detail came out once I brightened it up:

I'm not sure what that mist is, since I'm sure it wasn't misty at the time. Maybe it's the 300% humidity? ;) Either way, I like how the head is so crisp, like it's popping through the fog.

And finally, the shot that surprised me most:

Her bloody patches still make me sad every time I see her, even if she DID just escape. 

(Am I maybe too emotionally invested in a fictional, fake dragon? YEPPERS.)

As you know, the dragon sits atop Gringotts bank, waaaay up there:

I took that close-up with a 75-300 zoom lens, standing in the middle of the side street off to the left. No tripod. 

Here's the same photo, zoomed in:

You can actually see the veins in her eyeball. And every pebble of her skin looks as crisp as if I were five feet away, not a few hundred. How cool is that?? Just a lucky shot in every sense of the word, since my others weren't nearly as sharp.

Hope you guys enjoyed the eye candy! If you'd like to see more of my best Wizarding World shots, I've compiled them all in an album here on Flickr.

Technical Note: My camera is a Canon 7D, and I typically use a 17-50 lens. The mermaid fountain & street view were both taken with a wide-angle, though, and several of the close-ups were taken with the zoom lens.