BEST BICYCLE SEAT

In one of my Toronto back alley explorations, I came across this unusual bicycle rickshaw parked in what I fell can be (loosely) described as a backyard. It was looking fairly derelict, with flat tires, rust and paint sadly deteriorated. However, the decorations seemed to be in fairly good shape. The theme seemed to be decorations and portraits with, what seemed to me, at least, inspired by Bollywood. the unfortunate thing was that the weather was not very cooperative, being dull and heavily overcast, even providing the occasional light rain shower. To make the best of the resulting image, I decided to use tone mapping to try to bring out the colours a bit better. - JW

Taken with a hand-held Nikon D5000 fitted with a 12-24mm lense set to 12mm, ISO400, Aperture priority mode, f/8.0, 1/800 sec with an EV-0.33 exposure bias. The image was HDR processed in Luminance/Qtpfsgui using the settings below, but, given only a single image was used, it is tone-mapped and not strictly HDR. Additional PP was done using GIMP: slight tonal range adjustment, some overall saturation boost, sharpen, add border and scale to 1024 wide for posting.

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DSC_5598_rickshawadjbordx1024_pregamma_1_mantiuk_contrast_mapping_0.1_saturation_factor_1.2_detail_factor_1
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Qtpfsgui 1.9.3 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Mantiuk
Parameters:
Contrast Mapping factor: 0.1
Saturation Factor: 1.2
Detail Factor: 1
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PreGamma: 1

The 21st century traffic light. Looks to me as if it has been designed from ground up to be useful and beautiful. Could be an invention of the Bauhaus area.
The post is a little wide and of white color, so it looks like a sign post and is easy to see and to recognize. The light itself follows the shape of the post. There is only one big area lit up with LEDs. This area can be red, yellow and green. When the light just changed the entire area is filled with the new color. When it is red or green, then part of the area is used as a count-down and the other part stays fixed so that the current color is clearly visible even when the count-down is very low. Additionally the red count-down is from the bottom up while the green one is from top down. The fixed red/green areas are thus above/below just like on a conventional traffic light.
Also, the same single light is used for pedestrians and vehicles. It is well visible for everybody and the count-down makes it flexible enough for everybody. Not just pedestrians and high-power motor vehicles, but also for bicycles (fast and slow) and electrical bicycles and motorcycles.

I liked those lights the first time I saw them! They need a couple seconds of getting used to because you don't find them when looking for a conventional traffic light. But after that couple seconds they are really great. I wish that more place would use them!
I still have to find out who designed them, so I can write and thank them!