Steven Bourelle Digital Arts

This beautiful covered bridge was photographed in Waupaca, WI at a place called The Red Mill. We visited the bridge in the autumn of 2009 while on our fall colors trip into Central Wisconsin.

Making a black and white image of this photo has been an interesting project for me. I’ve worked on it off and on for months, thinking all along that it would make a great mono chrome image, but never finding  that special combination of contrast, light and emotion that makes black and white so special.

I think one of the problems had to do with the color version of this image, I really like it. It’s a very nice picture with lots of fall color in it. So taking away that color was a difficult thing to do. Yet something kept telling me that this would make a great black and white.

A couple of nights ago I began playing with the picture again, and once again I couldn’t find what I wanted. I even resorted to using some Lightroom presets, but nothing worked. Then I tried something that I’ve been doing with my renaissance faire portraits but have never done with a landscape, I washed out the edges with a whitish vignette. The image jumped off the monitor at me!  There it was, this is what I had been searching for. The vignette laid the groundwork for all that was to follow and within an hour I had my mono chrome version of the covered bridge.

I guess the lesson learned is to always experiment because you never know what will work.

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As a child and then as a teenager, I loved fantasy. I watched fantasy movies, read fantasy books, played Dungeons and Dragons and often dreamed of living in those times. Times when knights would put on their suits of armor and do battle on horseback. As often happens though, I lost interest in fantasy as an adult.

Three weeks ago I found that old love for fantasy again. Since our first trip to the Bristol Renaissance Faire back on July 11, I’ve been living in that world all over again. It’s pretty awesome to know that just 15 miles down the road is a place where all these childhood dreams are real and that through my photos I can relive those dreams over and over.

There aren’t many places in the world where an adult can feel like a child again. I’m sure glad I found my place.

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This beautiful lady is Sarah Marie Mullen. She can currently be found at the Bristol Renaissance Faire making wonderful music on her harp.

It seems that everyone who has a camera at the faire takes Sarah’s picture, I’ve seen hundreds of them. In most of the pictures she’s looking right at the camera and smiling, and even though her smile is very pretty, I like that I caught her right after she smiled at me. What can I say, my timing was off and I missed the smile. Luckily for me, I ended up with what I feel is a more personal portrait of her playing her harp.

I wanted to make this image even more unique than most, so I did it in sepia, softened it up and added the white vignette to frame it all.

If you like harp music, head over to Sarah’s website, SarahMarieMullen.com and check her out.

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One of the things I most enjoyed at the Bristol Renaissance Faire was the beautiful clothing that some of the women wore. I have to admit, I have a thing for women in this type of clothing. I feel the renaissance gowns and hats really bring out a beauty in women that’s hard to find in modern times.

I don’t know who this lovely lady is, she was walking about all by herself when I asked if I could have a picture and she posed for me. If she happens to read this, thank you for the great picture.

Though the gown she is wearing was very colorful and the original photo is great, I knew right away that I wanted to work with this image in a brownish or sepia tone.

By tweaking one of the presets in Adobe Lightroom, I was able to begin the process of getting the color I wanted. I then exported the JPG and loaded it into Photoshop. Once in Photoshop I used Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro to soften the image and add some dramatic glow. It was when I added the glow that I knew I had what I was looking for. The only problem was that the filter softened her face a little more than I wanted, so I used a vector mask on that layer and painted back some of the sharpness from the layer underneath. I finish the image off by lightening her face a little.

One of the greatest things about modern digital photography is the ability to create images that look anything but modern. By using the different tools available, we’re able to create artistic images that are not only beautiful to look at, but also create a sense of an older time.

View More of My Photos From the Faire

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