Anthony Gesture in B&W at the Heian Shrine
NOTE: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.
Heian Shrine -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2009 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D700 + Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 80 mm — 1/320 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 — map & image datanearby photos

Another photo from yesterday's Shichi-go-san event with Anthony. Anthony gestures to his grandfather with his ougi (folding fan).

I thought I'd give this one a try in B&W, which is a much more difficult proposition than you might expect if you've never done it. In Adobe Lightroom you can adjust all kinds of parameters for how the conversion from color is done, completely changing the character of the result in wild swings with a flick of a slider. Even while remaining in the grayscale world, the creative opportunities are endless... and if you are not guided by an innate sense of what you want, you end up wandering around in circles. This doesn't even consider the additional dimensions that doing a monotone or duotone rendition add.

My brain got fried pretty quickly. I have no idea whether this particular rendition is what I want, because I have no idea what I want other than to move on to something else. 🙂

UPDATE: Okay, I removed the fence rail in the background that had the unfortunate placement of looking like it was Anthony's fan thurst through Grandpa's arm.

And to appeas my Mom who likes a little color better, here's a version with that antique 60's faded-color look...

Heian Shrine -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2009 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/

Continued here...


All 5 comments so far, oldest first...

Interesting effect, though my first immediate impression was that Anthony had skewered his grandfather’s coat and sleeve with a spear-like object. Closer inspection plus your explanation cleared that right up. Still like color a little better, though.

— comment by Grandma Friedl, Ohio, USA on October 13th, 2009 at 11:03pm JST (14 years, 6 months ago) comment permalink

For bkac and white conversion, I love to use Silver Efex from Nik sofware (plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom now I think). It foes it for me much faster than Lightroom, less trials and errors. The presets are pretty good.
Nice photo here !

— comment by Luc on October 13th, 2009 at 11:15pm JST (14 years, 6 months ago) comment permalink

Hmmm…I like the B&W treatment, but the left half of the frame seems way too bright to me.

They were under the large awning of one of the temple buildings, so all the light was coming from the left. I sort of like it, especially with Grandpa’s suit reflecting so dapperly, but yes, it does lack a sense of symmetry. —Jeffrey

— comment by Zak on October 13th, 2009 at 11:25pm JST (14 years, 6 months ago) comment permalink

I removed the fence rail in the background with the unfortunate placement of looking like it was Anthony’s fan thurst through Grandpa’s arm.

I thought something was askew (after having seen the image with “fence rail in the background” few hours ago). (Fence being in the same line as the fan did appear as if some wood|metal rod had pierced the coat arm. I had to look a bit closely to verify that that was not the case.)

— comment by parv on October 14th, 2009 at 3:54pm JST (14 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink

Uh..thank you, dear. I stand appeased. I guess. Though I believe I said that “I liked color a little better”, not “I liked a little color better.” But thanks for the effort anyway. Both are very nice photos.

— comment by Grandma Friedl, Ohio, USA on October 14th, 2009 at 11:17pm JST (14 years, 5 months ago) comment permalink
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