Category: Photography – Black & White

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Photography Photography - Black & White San Francisco/California

The Power of Critique

I recently shared one of my black and white images online. It’s an image from an August 2009 workshop (day 1, day 2) that I took with Chris Honeysett in San Francisco. That workshop with Chris was my first photography workshop experience – and one which had a special impact on me. Especially, it taught me to slow down and see – in black and white. Chris is a master photographer and he sees the world slowly. He taught us to stop shooting and compose – a remarkable experience.

Back to the rest of this story about critique. One of the places we shot was in Embarcadero Center in San Francisco. Lots of great scenes in that venue – but one special one captured my imagination. It’s the image of a spiral staircase surrounding a large fern with the pattern brickwork of the Center in the background. Here’s my original shot:

Spiral Stairs and Fern

Earlier, I had happened across a technique (see Step 14) on Diane Varner’s excellent Daily Walks site involving the use of the Soft Light blend mode in Photoshop to lighten and darken (dodge and burn) portions of an image. I opened my spiral staircase image to experiment a bit with that particular technique – lightening the fern, darkening the stairs – and, after a few minutes, produced this image:

Stairway and Fern - Embarcadero Center - San Francisco

Like I usually do, I uploaded the image to Flickr (and to Google+) – partially to archive it and partially hoping for some critique. Almost immediately, I had that critique – from my online photographer friend Jill Clardy. She really liked the image – but suggested an additional crop to the top – removing the upper level. I liked her suggestion and, when I added that crop, I also added an additional crop on the left side of the image to remove some of the visual clutter there as well.

Below is the final result – a much better image that demonstrates the power of critique in action! This image has more drama, less clutter – the stairs pull you down into this version of the image.

Stairway and Fern - Embarcadero Center - San Francisco

Such a minor but critical change – with a big impact visually! Thanks Jill for sharing your eyes!

For more like this, take a look at this sequence of posts I did regarding different treatments of the Pierce Barn at Point Reyes in black and white – all based on critiques from good friends! Here’s Take 1, Take 2 and Take 3!

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Carmel HDR Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S95

The Tree at Carmel Beach

The Tree at Carmel Beach

This week I’m in the Monterey/Carmel area for a few days attending a security conference. Tonight, I hopped over the hill to Carmel to meet a good friend for dinner at Grasing’s – which was superb by the way!

I headed over a bit early and did some exploring around Carmel Beach. This particular gnarly tree really caught my eye – and I took a couple of shots in RAW using my tiny Canon PowerShot S95.

The image seemed destined for black and white – so after a bit of HDR post-processing I pulled it into Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 and ended up with this result. Lots of busy-ness in this image – but love the range of tones!

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Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Stanford

Another Look at the Pizza Guy

IMG_5348

While photowalking Stanford a few weeks ago with Doug Kaye, we happened across this guy eating pizza out in the courtyard in front of the fountain in the Old Union. It seemed like such a classic “street shot”. It was shot with my Canon 5D Mark II using the Canon 24-105mm f/4 IS lens.

The first version I did came out pretty flat and dull – so I thought I’d try it again and use Nik’s Silver Efex 2 to perform the black and white conversion. I’m much happier with this result – although I’d still very much a novice at using Silver Efex!

What do you think? Better? Leave a comment for me below.

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Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Stanford

Out Shooting Circles at Stanford

Stanford Circles by Scott Loftesness

While out walking at Stanford yesterday afternoon, Lily and I came across this sunken oak tree planting – with these beautiful steps tiered down to the old oak’s ground level. The steps had some great light and shadows – in the wonderfully diffuse light of a mostly cloudy day.

My late friend Chris Gulker first turned me on to these kinds of scenes. Just walking with him was an experience in seeing things – that I would never have seen. Chris paid special attention to the combination of lights and shadows that most of us miss. He just saw the world differently. A favorite example is the stairstep railings shot at Cantor – where Chris saw shadows from the railings I never would have seen. Learning to see a bit through his eyes was such a treat.

Chris would have loved these steps down to the heritage Oak. I know we would have lingered for a while looking at these lights and shadows – just as Lily and I did.

This image was shot with my Canon PowerShot S95 and post-processed using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.

Hope you like these steps too!

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HDR Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Stanford

The Thinker in the Rodin Sculpture Garden

The Thinker - Gates of Hell - Rodin Sculpture Garden - Stanford University

Up top in Rodin’s Gates of Hell sculpture sits the Thinker – pondering everything. The Gates is an amazing sculpture and beautifully displayed outdoors at Stanford’s Cantor Art Center.

This image was taken with my little Canon PowerShot S95. It was converted from original RAW using Lightroom 3 followed by a black and white conversion performed using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.

I like the way it turned out – hope you do too!

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Aviation HDR Photography Photography Photography - Black & White

The SR-71A Blackbird at Castle Air Museum

SR-71 Blackbird - Castle Air Museum, California

I’ve been playing around a bit more with black and white photography – including going back and looking through my collection of earlier images for candidates for conversion to black and white.

Here’s an example from the Castle Air Museum from four years ago that I recently converted to black and white. Castle has one of the few remaining SR-71’s – specifically SR-71A 61-7960.

In terms of process, I first did a single image RAW HDR conversion following by the black and white conversion. This is a particularly challenging image – because of how the SR-71 is positioned in front of all of that tree foliage. Still, I thought the conversion turned out OK.

Many years ago when I worked for IBM I spent a day at Beale Air Force Base – home of the SR-71’s. What a treat! Years later, I was at Oshkosh when the first SR-71 flew in for the airshow – took about 45 minutes for the SR-71 to travel from Beale to Oshkosh! I remember the rope line around the SR-71 while it was on display with the signs that read “Use of Deadly Force is Authorized” – in other words, stay away!

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Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S90 San Francisco/California

San Francisco in the Mist from Sausalito

San Francisco Study - from Sausalito - Scott Loftesness

Last summer, I was over in Sausalito heading north for a day of photography when I stopped just off 2nd Street to snap a few shots of San Francisco in the mist across the Bay.

I particularly like this black and white treatment – it’s loosely reminiscent of a Chris Honeysett image that hangs in my office at work. You can see a few of my other color originals from this day’s shoot in this set on Flickr.

These images were shot handheld using my Canon PowerShot S90.

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Living Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 San Francisco/California

2011 – 01 – 01 – Shoot Me!

Shoot Me! - Scott Loftesness - New Year's Day 2011 - San Francisco

Welcome to the new decade! Seems like Y2K was just yesterday, doesn’t it?!

Like last year, I ventured up to San Francisco on New Year’s Day to try to capture some shots with clouds in the sky. But, it wasn’t the best of days – a sloppy winter storm hung over San Francisco – with windy and sloppy rain making it a tough photography day. It was as cold and windy as I’ve ever felt it along the bay by the bridge. I guess it is January, after all!

That said, I had some good fun – capturing one of those serendipity shots. I loved the shot above – taken near the Warming Hut on Crissy Field. I titled it “Shoot Me!“. A couple of friends just having fun out in the wind and rain on the pier.

The rest of today’s set is here on Flickr – a couple of color vs. black and white comparisons of the Golden Gate Bridge and another black and white of the Palace of the Legion of Honor. All shot with my trusty Canon PowerShot S95. I also had my Canon 5D Mark II with me in the car – but it just wasn’t a 5D day!

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Compact HDR HDR Photography Photography Photography - Black & White Photography - Canon PowerShot S95 Photomatix Pro Stanford

The Power of Black and White – Canon S95 HDR

Maybe it’s the visit to the Ansel Adams show with Chris on Saturday that has sent me over the edge, but I’m continually intrigued by how one can take a color photo and turn it into a much more powerful black and white image.

See the photo below – it’s #3 from my initial Canon S95 HDR post earlier this morning.

Rodin's Gates of Hell @ Stanford

Frankly, I didn’t spend much time on this photo – the point was to provide it (a traditional HDR post-processed shot) as a point of comparison with the new in-camera HDR feature built-in to the S95.

As I was looking at it, I wondered how a conversion to black and white might look – now that I’ve become acquainted and familiar with Lightroom 3’s excellent Black and White Mix controls.

So, I gave it a shot – here’s the result – after about 10 minutes of tweaking in Lightroom:

Rodin's Gates of Hell - Canon PowerShot S95 - HDR

Obviously, it’s the same subject as the original photo – Rodin’s Gates of Hell – but it’s been transformed into a more powerful photograph through the conversion to black and white.

I also experimented for the first time using the new Lens Correction features in Lightroom 3 – to remove the distortion in terms of angle, etc. that I had in the original image. It now looks very close to a direct, head-on shot at the scuplture.

Finally, I tweaked it in Flickr – using Picnik to add a museum frame around it – dressing it up a bit.

I like the result. What do you think?

You may also want to view my Flickr set of Canon S95 HDRs taken this morning at Stanford.

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Lightroom Photography Photography - Black & White

Take 3: The Barn at Pierce Point Ranch

In a followup comment, Don Neff pointed out that the strip at the bottom of the photo could use some detail added back in as well.

Here’s take 3:

IMG_3512-4.jpg

I darkened the sky just a skotch more – this version seems nicely in balance to me – although my good friend and pro photography Chris Gulker votes with Ansel Adams for the first version (with the almost black sky)! Seems like dark skies are an “acquired taste”!