Category: Black and White

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Black and White Lighthouse Lightroom Nik Software Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Photomatix Pro

Coasting in 2012 – Pigeon Point Lighthouse

All Aglow - Pigeon Point - 2012

This morning I met up with Doug Kaye over on the coast – for a morning of shooting – of the photography kind. We started at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve and then headed south to Pigeon Point Lighthouse before heading to Pescadero and Duarte’s Tavern (DOO-arts they say!) for a great cracked Dungeness crab lunch.

I’ve really come to appreciate these photo shoots with a friend – especially one who, like Doug, is pushing new frontiers and trying new techniques. As we explore a venue, we see through each other’s eyes – and see things we otherwise wouldn’t see. Try it sometime. It’s great fun!

This image is of the Pigeon Point Lighthouse on the San Mateo County coastline south of Pescadero. The light this morning was beautiful – and this black and white treatment features it!

This image was shot as a 3 image handheld HDR with my Canon 5D Mark II. I post-processed it first with Photomatix Pro (using undeveloped JPEGs exported from Lightroom 3 and Photomatix alignment by features), and then opened in Photoshop CS5. In Photoshop, I first adjusted with Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 – specifically, tonal contrast and detail extractor. Then I brought the image into Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 before finally bringing back into Lightroom for final tweaking, noise reduction, and uploading.

I’ll always remember this day and our time coasting the San Mateo coast! Beautiful!

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Black and White Golden Gate Lightroom Nik Software Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II San Francisco/California

New Year’s Day 2012 at the Golden Gate

New Year's Day - San Francisco - 2012

In what’s become sort of a tradition for me, on New Year’s Day I head for the Golden Gate and see what I can find to start the new year off right.

Today, my favorite venue was blocked by construction fencing – so I headed to my next favorite venue – Baker Beach. I happened to arrive just as the California Hornblower sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge.

This image was shot in RAW with my Canon 5D Mark II and then processed tonight in Photoshop using Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 and Silver Efex Pro 2 before importing into Lightroom 3 for final cropping (16:9), toning, sharpening and noise reduction.

There were a lot of people enjoying Baker Beach when I shot the original image – but they were removed using the content-aware healing brush in Photoshop CS5 – yielding this final image. I’m sure they don’t mind! 😉

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Black and White Living Marin Headlands Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Rodeo Beach

Time Together

Time Together - Rodeo Beach - 2011

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Here’s one of my favorite images from last Saturday’s Rodeo Beach photo walk with Doug Kaye. Sort of like street shooting – except on the beach.

We were heading down toward the dramatic rocks at the south end of Rodeo Beach when I happened to notice this couple – hand in hand – walking toward the water.

They later explored together – looking for shells and other objects that had washed up on the beach.

But I’ll always remember them this way – hand in hand…

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Black and White Marin Headlands Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Rodeo Beach

A Beautiful Day at Rodeo Beach

I Got You Babe - Battery Mendell - 2011

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My good friend Doug Kaye and I headed out today to the Marin Headlands – in particular, Battery Mendell up high on the cliffs and, down low, Rodeo Beach itself. I’ve yet to process most of the photos from this walk with Doug – but I did especially like the image above – a couple walking along the cliffs near Battery Mendell. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Doug is helping plan a photo walk at Rodeo Beach after Christmas – details here.

[Update: here are some great shots taken from the photowalk posted over on Google+.]

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Black and White Nik Software Photography Photography - Black & White

In the Snow in Korea

In the Snow - Korean War Veterans Memorial - 2005

Tonight, I’ve been going through my Lightroom catalog – attempting to do a better job of categorizing the almost 30,000 images I’ve got in my master catalog. Along the way, I’ve been marking a few photos that I thought might be worthy of some additional processing – including the one above.

This is a shot taken by my daughter on a school trip in 2005 to Washington, DC – at the Korean War Veterans Memorial. As I stumbled across it, I found the composition so compelling – shot in the middle of a late February snow fall – that I had to try to process it just a bit.

To finish it, I used Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 to adjust it and add just a bit of blue toning that seemed appropriate to the mood of the photo. Click on the image to see a larger version – with the snow flying!

I hope she likes it!

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Black and White Monochrome Photography Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95

Water Jugs Revisited

Water Jugs 2 - San Francisco - 2011

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Back in September, I posted a black and white image of three water jugs that I took earlier at one of the restaurants at the Ferry Building in San Francisco using my tiny Canon PowerShot S95. I loved the black and white treatment I was able to create with Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.

This afternoon I played around a bit more with this image – basing my new treatment on that earlier post-processed black and white. I wanted to try some selective color enhancements to add some glow and depth to the image. Above is the result. Not sure why this image came to mind – but there’s something about it that I particularly enjoy and it drew me back to post-processing it again using some new techniques and new tools that I’ve been learning this fall.

This afternoon’s image certainly isn’t perfect – for example, I don’t like the subtle glow around the jugs or the bright lines on the bottle edges – but you get the idea of what’s possible from this version. In particular, the filters I used to enhance the image included Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 – especially detail enhancer to pull up the details of the condensation on the jugs – along with two Solid Color adjustment layers to add the tonality to the image and a final Selective Color adjustment layer to tweak the final colors.

For easy reference, below is the earlier black and white version. Click on either image to see the large version. Which do you prefer?

Water Jugs - San Francisco - 2011

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Black and White France Photography Photography - Black & White

France 2006: An Example of Layers in a Photo

Shoes - Saint-Paul-de-Vence France - 2006

I had a great time this afternoon catching up with my good friend Doug Kaye. Doug’s recently had a pretty serious illness – and we were all worried about him during that time. But, based on my visit today, he’s almost back to his usual self – and about 20 pounds lighter. I hope we’ll be out shooting together again soon.

While we were getting caught up, Doug talked about this reaction to this particular photo of mine that I posted on Google+ last week. It’s kind of a strange shot – taken in a village in Provence, France in 2006 using one of my early Canon Powershot cameras – an S500. I was casually flipping through my portfolio of images in Lightroom when I stumbled across the original and something about it caught my eye. I brought the original image into Photoshop, tweaked it a bit (Tonal Contrast primarily) in Nik’s Color Efex Pro 4 before taking it to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2. A bit of vignetting, some subtle toning, and it was complete.

Doug’s reaction was what stimulated our conversation this afternoon – his comment on this photo was:

Love this one! The foreground bars give such a twist to the story. Lighting/vignetting really place the emphasis well. Great composition & crop.

— Doug Kaye

This fall, I’ve been taking a photography course at Stanford and one of the themes the instructor has educated us to is the notion of layers in a photo. I think that’s what Doug saw in this photo – and, perhaps, what I saw when I originally spotted in among a mass of older photos in my library. There are several layers at work here – the outer bars, the wall and ledge with the shoes, the windows, and the reflections in the windows – or both the bars and a more distant wall. Almost seems hard to imagine squeezing more layers into an image like this!

Another area of interest which caught my eye as I was scanning was the two window panes above the shoes with the whiter borders – as if the glass in them had recently been replaced. I like the checkerboard pattern those two panes add to the visual interest of this image.

I suspect I had no clue about any of this when I originally took this shot! But, it’s great fun to look at it now – and to appreciate a bit of what it teaches us about the power of layers and the treats those layers provide to our eyes!

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Black and White Nik Software Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II San Francisco/California Selective Color

Stars and Stripes – San Francisco – 2011

Stars and Stripes - San Francisco - 2011

I was out on San Francisco Bay yesterday for the Fleet Week Air Show with the Marin Photography Club. Here’s a shot I took in between the air show flights – this lovely old sailing vessel with a huge American flag flying off the fantail.

This image was shot with my Canon 5D Mark II using the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L lens. It was post-processed using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 with a bit of selective color on the American flag – and a touch of blue toning overall.

If you ever have the opportunity to get out on the Bay for the Fleet Week events, do so! It was an incredible experience for me – and not just for the airplane pictures!

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Black and White Golden Gate Photography Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 San Francisco/California

Sail Away – San Francisco – 2011

Socked In - San Francisco - 2011

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Yesterday, I headed north to Sausalito to join the Marin Photo Club’s charter boat heading out onto San Francisco Bay for the Blue Angels air show performance.

Coming north across the Golden Gate Bridge, the fog was still blowing through and under the bridge and created this lovely view toward the skyline of San Francisco. I shot this using my tiny Canon PowerShot S95 – handheld – from the View Point on the north side of the bridge.

When I noticed the sailboat in the image, I decided to post-process it a bit – using curves and masks in Photoshop CS5 to isolate adjustments in the sky/skyline, the fog, and the water/sailboat at the bottom of the image. A final curves layer added the toning – tweaking the blue and green colors just a bit.

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Black and White Nik Software Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Selective Color Stanford

Undercover in the Stanford Quad – 2011

Undercover - Stanford - 2011

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Earlier this summer, there was a lot of work going on in Memorial Court at Stanford. On one of my visits, I came across the Burghers of Calais all wrapped up. This image was processed using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 with a bit of selective cover over the one Burgher.

Hold me tight!