What I Am Working On: Fiddling

This photo was taken at Menin Gate, Ypres Belgium.  It’s a massive WWI monument that has a Last Post ceremony every evening at 8pm:

ISO 500 18mm f/11 1/100 sec

Being that it was June, there was quite a bit of natural light after the ceremony. The light gave the monument a nice glow. I liked the color version of this photo, but was interested this week in creating a black and white version:

ISO 500 18mm f/11 1/100 sec

This edit has two layers to achieve the mix of black and white with red. On the black and white layer, I focused on bringing out detail like the names on the wall. On the layer where I was adding the red color back in, I also dropped the luminance slider of the reds, creating a muted tone that worked with the black and white of the rest of the image. Getting the colors and the black and white layers to where I wanted them and then blending them took quite a bit of fiddling. No formulas or rules here, just a do I like this better? how about now? kind of approach.

Do you like this particular interpretation? This is definitely a shot that I will be working with again to create a color version as well. Your comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge, Flower of Any Kind.

Travel Theme: Connections

Today is Remembrance Day or Veterans Day and the poppy is a symbol for both.  I took a photo of some poppies growing in a field in Fundy National Park a few years ago and I decided to re-edit one of them for today.

ISO 200 135mm 0ev f/5.6 1/400

In order to get the original shot, which I will put at the bottom of this post, I did have to set the shutter speed fairly high because it was windy that day and I did not have a tripod with me.  It still turned out to be a pretty bright image.  In the version that you see above I have combined a few filters in Photoshop and I ended up liking this particular combination.

First under Filter I chose -Filter Gallery and then -Colored Pencil.  I chose a fairly thick stroke and a medium-light canvas.  From there I chose Filter again and then -Other  -High Pass then I changed my blending mode to saturation.  It was the last step that dropped almost all of the color out of the image in a way that I liked.

Here is the original image:

ISO 200 135mm 0ev f/5.6 1/400

Quite different isn’t it? Do you have a preference?

Sad that this poppy is connected with thoughts of so many who have died.  It is a beautiful flower.  This post was written in part in response to this week’s travel theme, connections.

Peace to all of you.

Cheers!

Travel Theme: Multiples

The theme at Where’s My backpack? is multiples.  I have created a gallery below of a few photos that includes multiples.  I also have multiple cameras, so I have included at least one photo from each camera.  My oldest camera is a Fuji A900 which was my point and shoot (and only) camera for several years.  I am sad to say that it is now not working so well.  My newer point and shoot is a Canon Powershot 320.  I am still learning to use it properly. My DSLR is a Canon 50D.  I also have an iPhone.  Between those four, I have taken the images below:

ISO 250 17mm 0ev f/5.6 1/160 Canon Powershot

ISO 250 135mm 0ev f/5.6 1/60 Canon 50D

ISO 1000 4mm f/2.8 1/10 iPhone

ISO 200 135mm 0ev f/5.6 1/400 Canon 50D

ISO 100 22mm 0ev f/13 1/150 Fuji A900

Cheers!