Revisiting Giverny

I do sometimes edit my photography multiple times. That’s the beauty of digital photography, it is very easy to create several variations of an image without incurring a huge cost, it’s just an investment of time. This morning I began with this image, taken at Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny:

ISO 800 22mm f/13 1/640sec

If you are a regular reader, you may remember this edit:

ISO 800 22mm f/13 1/640sec

I wrote about it a few months ago, that edit was about creating a vintage, almost impressionist feel. This morning I was revisiting with the thought of creating a black and white version. It’s an idea I had worked on a few months ago and come up with this version:

ISO 800 22mm f/13 1/640sec

I wasn’t crazy about it, so instead, I blogged about the color version and decided to let the black and white idea sit for a while. This morning I was back at it, and here is the result:

ISO 800 22mm f/13 1/640sec

Much better in my opinion. This time I started with a green filter, interesting because that is what improved the sky quite a bit. As I am writing this, it occurs to me that maybe I could have tried a graduated filter with this edit and that might have done quite nice things for the sky. I also darkened the whites in the image and lightened the blacks a bit.

With this edit, there were two things I really wanted to do. One was to improve the sky, make it more interesting. The second was to retain the reflections of the trees and vegetation in the water. Do you think that has happened with this edit? Feel free to leave a comment below. Have thoughts or tips on using a graduated filter on a black and white photo, I would be interested to hear about that as well.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Mirror Images or Reflections.

Reflective

I was lucky enough recently to be able to make a visit to Monet’s house and garden.

ISO 800 22mm f/13 1/640sec

This shot is of the water garden, there is a more formal style garden closer to the house. It’s a popular place even first thing in the morning still in the off-season. Walking in the garden it stuck me how versatile it was designed to be. Lots of different plants would mean that it would look different over the course of the year. Also, it’s an obviously planned space where the angle of light and time of day would make a big difference.

It’s a popular attraction, so my shots showing the overall gardens have a lot of people in them. It would be lovely to have the place to yourself. I walked this part of the garden twice. Once with my 50mm lens and once with my 11-22mm lens.  The photo in this post was taken with the wider angle lens.

For this particular interpretation of the scene, I wanted to create a vintage look, toning down some of the brightness of the original shot while still maintaining the reflections in the water. I have posted the original shot below. One of the first things I did was crop the photo. I then left a few bright spots in the photo, both in the sky and in the water, to attract attention to the trees and their reflection below.

ISO 800 22mm f/13 1/640sec

What do you think of this particular interpretation? Feel free to leave a comment below.

This post has been added to Thursday’s Special, Pick a Word in June.

Cheers!