I was going through some images this morning looking for something to post on my Google+ account for the SacredSunday theme when I came across a picture I had taken of the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I had previously done a black & white conversion that I previously posted to my blog. I recently added Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4 to my toolkit and I was just curious as to what I might be able to do using that plugin.

couple of weeks ago I ventured over to the west side of MIchigan in search of something different to shoot. I found some interesting subjects and headed back home. I hadn’t had any lunch, so on the way home I decided to stop and get some food. The weather was kind of snowy and the roads were a bit of a mess so my intention was to get a quick lunch and head back on to the highway. I saw a sign for a fast food restaurant so I thought I would get off and grab a bite to eat. Normally these restaurants are right at the exit so you can get off, eat and get back on. However, when I got off at this particular exit, I found out that the restaurant was about 5 miles north of the highway. I debated for a bit about just getting back on and going to the next location, but finally decided to just put in the little extra time since I was already off the highway. On my way up the road I passed by this old church. I thought it had some interesting character so I decided after I had my lunch I would come back and take some shots.

I had recently posted some black & white images both to my blog as well as Flickr and I received a comment on one of them from one of my Flickr contacts, Gary Easter, an architectural photographer. He mentioned that I might be interested in seeing a portfolio of historical Texas churches that he had put together. I was, and when I view the portfolio I was inspired to take a look at some of my earlier work to see if I could improve on some of my conversions. One of the things that I really like about Gary’s black & white images is the deep blacks and high contrast in some of the images. As I revisited some of my earlier conversions I found a couple that I thought could be improved on.

As part of a self imposed creativity session, I went out one Saturday with just one lens on my camera. I selected my 70-300mm because I wanted to focus on details, or get a compressed perspective. I use an Olympus E-3 which has a crop factor of 2x, making my 70-300 lens the 35mm equivalent of 140-600mm. The shot above is of a Catholic school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I had seen this building many times, but I never really looked at the details of its construction. The longer focal length really made me notice the details. The thing that really caught my eye about this building was the intricate brickwork …