A couple of years ago, I noticed the work of Chris Hilgert on Google+. At the time – he’s since moved on to other things – he was using a post-processing technique which I really enjoyed. The basic idea was to simplify the image to push noisy details out of the image while retaining fine details in the areas of primary interest in the image.
I decided to try experimenting again with variations on this technique – applying the technique to some of my images from Havana shot in 2013. The Flickr album that resulted is here.
Tonight I was looking back through my Lightroom archive and came across this image. It’s from the summer of 2013 when I was driving up to Bend, Oregon for a workshop with Sean Bagshaw and Zack Schnepf. I stayed overnight in Klamath Falls and got up early to drive to Crater Lake before heading on to Bend.
Crater Lake itself was amazing – but the drive out to the north brought this view of Mount Thielsen which was hard to pass up. This is one of those images that really takes me back to the moment in time when I was there. Part of the joy of photography is re-experiencing these moments!
Looking back through my shots from our visit to Havana a year ago, I came across this image. I had skipped over it previously – probably because it’s not super sharp and that blurred motion of the woman in the foreground. But, giving it a second look, it pulled me in – there’s the element of layers in this image.
Shot with my Nikon D600, I post processed it using Lightroom and Photoshop to emphasize the textures and tonality of the image.
Following on from yesterday’s “The Leader” image, here’s another example from our visit to Havana, Cuba last January. Also shot with my Nikon D600. I’ve been experimenting with some new techniques for monochrome conversion using a new action being developed by Dan Margulis as some other special tricks.
This is one of my favorite images from our trip to Cuba a year ago this week. It’s a shot of the lead singer in the band the night we were at Cafe Taberna – which plays that wonderful Ry Cooder / Buena Vista Social Club style of music. By the end of the evening, the band had us on our feet with lots of folks dancing in the aisles. Such a great memory!
I re-processed this image last night and uploaded it to Flickr. Today, it got picked up by Flickr Explore and went viral – resulting in thousands of page views and many new followers to my Flickr photostream. Pretty amazing to watch! The re-processing I did last night primarily involved a new Photoshop action being worked on by Dan Margulis which does some magic to portrait shots. I then processed it into monochrome in two steps – first using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 and then applied a platinum gradient map to give a gentler look to the monochrome treatment.
If you’re curious, here’s the original image straight out of the camera – my Nikon D600:
Here’s another shot from a great day on Point Reyes with Doug Kaye back in January.
The photographer had the high ground up on the rock – and he looked at us suggesting that it was his turf!
Shot with my Nikon D600 and post-processed in Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC. A bit of platinum toning adds to the depth and color – of this monochrome image. A personal favorite of mine – this one is getting printed and hung on the wall!
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