Posted on Nov.14, 2010, under Architecture

(Nikon D700, 16-35mm at 17mm, ISO 200, Exposure 1/1000 sec @ f/8.0)

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. One of those images is the one above the Cathedral Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe of Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

When I worked on this image, I started from the raw image and reworked things using Silver Efex Pro. The last time I did the conversion I did it by hand in Photoshop. One of the things that I wanted to change was the darkness of the sky. The original image had a nice blue sky and I figured by applying the correct filter I could darken it and get some nice contrast with the clouds. I also selected the ISO 32 Panatomic X film style which seemed to work well with the image. I adjusted the grain settings to get minimal grain, and I adjusted the blue sensitivity to make the sky darker. As with the original image, I also did some perspective correction to straighten the building, but I tried to keep just enough lean to make it look natural. I did some minor cloning of some bright items in the background as well. By way of comparison, here is my first conversion attempt that I posted back in April of this year:

And here is the original shot from which both conversions were taken:

Love to hear you thoughts on this one.

Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe – All rights reserved.

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