A Window in the Ceiling

I know you would usually call a window in the ceiling a skylight, but it really just seemed like a window to me:

ISO 1600 50mm 0ev f/8 1/500

This was a difficult shot for me to get and the first constraint was time.  I was on a tour of the Minnesota State Capitol, so I only had a few minutes and I hadn’t really expected to stumble across this window either.  You may be wondering why I used such a high shutter speed.  I had been thinking of creating an HDR image, but as it turned out, I did not get a set of exposures that were perfect, so I decided against using HDR.   Also, in order for this to be a successful HRD image, the lines in the glass would have to be perfectly lined up in the exposures and they just weren’t; I would have needed a tripod to get the shot I needed for HDR editing.

When I was taking the shot, composition was a challenge.  I couldn’t fit the whole window in so I had to go for just part of it.  You will see the original shot  and note that I cropped it when I edited it and I also straightened it.  All my editing I did in Photoshop.  I converted the original color image to black and white using a blue filter setting.  My last step in editing was to sharpen it.

Here is the original:

ISO 1600 50mm 0ev f/8 1/500

Despite the fact that this color version really only has a hint of color, it really does have a different feel than the black and white version, don’t you think?

This post was written for the weekly black and white photography challenge at Sonel’s Corner.  This week’s theme is windows and doors.

Cheers!

Black and White Weekly Photo Challenge: Toys

Just for fun sometimes I like to pull out my kids toys and think of ways to shoot them.  I have never tried to then process them in black and white.  So, yesterday I tried just that.  Here is my favorite:

ISO 100 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/80

It’s a lone wolf lurking in my front yard.  For this photo I went with an f-stop of 5.6 because I wanted the whole wolf to be in focus but I was OK with the background not being in focus.  I cropped the image in Aperture and then chose a  blue filter in Photoshop, then I sharpened the image a bit.

Thanks so much to Sonel for hosting this challenge.  I usually leave my images in color, so this is a fun chance to try black and white.

Cheers!

Black and White Revisited

A little over a week ago I wrote about a photo I had taken of leaves in black and white.  The post can be found here.  One of the things that I had been hoping to do was show the frost on the leaves.  Lori Ono, who commented on the original post, suggested some ways in which I might bring out the frost in the editing.  I used some of those suggestions to make this version:

ISO 1000 50mm 1ev f/2.2 1/640

This time I think the frost, particularly on the stems of the leaves, is visible.  In order to get this effect, I first put the photos into black and white with a blue filter in Aperture.  Then I edited the bracketed photos in Photomatix.  I cropped and sharpened the photo when I brought it back into Aperture.

If you click on Lori’s name above, it will take you to a photo challenge posting she wrote that I think turned out really well.

Cheers!