Weekly Photo Challenge: Transmogrify

When I see the word transmogrify, I always think of Calvin and Hobbes, so despite the definition of the word being to change in a negative way, I can’t help but thinking of it in a more light-hearted, positive way.  The way that the meaning of a word can be influenced by the way that it is used is interesting to me.

People not only change language to suit them, they also change their homes to suit them as well. Imagine that this is what you see when you look out the window of this house:

ISO 200 4.33mm f/2.7 1/400

Turning around to face the interior you would not expect to see this:

ISO 1250 5.44mm f/3.2 1/20

But this is the interior of a house that is now the Museum Ons’ Lieve Heer Ops Solder or Our Lord in the Attic, a hidden Catholic Church in Amsterdam.  The church dates from 1663 and was used to celebrate Mass in secret when doing so in public was prohibited. As I was taking this photo though, I was thinking about how it would look if I edited it to a black and white version:

ISO 1250 5.44mm f/3.2 1/20

As much as I like the warm tones of the original, there is something that I find more settled in the black and white version. Instead of talking about the specifics of how I created the black and white version, I would like to just focus on the first editing step.  I started with cropping.  I started there because there were two things that bothered me about this image, the jacket visible on the right side, and the fact that the altar is crooked.  Using the straighten option within the cropping tool in Photoshop fixed both of these problems.  I’ve included a link because about halfway through the article there is a photo showing exactly where to find the tool if you are not familiar with how to use it.  In my opinion this is the easiest way to straighten a photo and if this is something I know I am going to need to do I often start with that step.

So, what do you think of the transformation? I think the crop helped a lot.  Do you have a preference for the color or the black and white version?  Would you build a Church inside your house?  I’d never seen anything like it. Feel free to leave a comment below.