Archive for the 'Black and White' Category

Humpback Covered Bridge

May 24th, 2010

This photo is of the Humpback Covered Bridge in Covington,Virginia. We stopped there on our trip to Norfolk back in March. I hadn’t posted any of the pictures from that day because I wasn’t real happy with them, but tonight when I looked at this image I saw something in it that I hadn’t seen before and this black and white was born.

This bridge was built in 1857 and remained in public use until 1929. In 1953 the bridge was reconditioned and the land around it was purchased and turned into a park. This is one of the few remaining “humpback” (Meaning the middle is higher than the sides.) covered bridges in the country and is the oldest covered bridge in Virginia.

Eureka Sand Dunes in Black and White

March 17th, 2010

Here’s the next image in my 35mm slide scan series. Before I put it on Flickr last night, it had never been seen online. It’s also my newest black and white, well sort of anyway.

This photo, taken at the Eureka Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park, is actually the very first black and white that I made in Photoshop back in 1999. I don’t know if it’s still there, but there use to be a print of it hanging in Speed of Light Photo in Mammoth Lakes. I have no idea what happened to the original black and white file of this image, so I remade it last night.

Eureka Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park, CA

The Art of Visualization

February 25th, 2010

How often do you think about photography and the photos that you take? I do it all the time. Not a day goes by that some thought about photography doesn’t pop into my head. Many times these thoughts are ideas, or visualizations, about pictures that I want to take when the conditions are right for a certain subject

Take this picture of the Wind Point Lighthouse along Lake Michigan in Racine, WI for example. Not to long ago I read a blog post by Greg Russell on his website Alpenglow Images. The post is titled House on Fire ruin – A Vertical Panorama and it’s about how he shot a vertical panorama by stitching together three horizontal pictures. The minute I finished the post I knew the subject I wanted to try this technique on, Wind Point Lighthouse.

Having shot the lighthouse many times, under many different and conditions, I knew in my mind the composition I wanted and the conditions that I wanted to take it in. Let the waiting game begin….

About a week later the conditions I wanted came to be. We had been out shooting an old mill in Illinois when, on the way home, I realized the conditions were perfect for my lighthouse shot. So we drove out there and I took my three horizontal pictures of the lighthouse. When I got home and stitched the pictures together, I was blown away by the result. There in front of me was not only the image I had envisioned, but something much nicer. This was the best picture I had ever taken of the light.

Then another vision came into my head, I saw this picture in black and white. I immediately began to work on the black and white version that I saw in my mind. Everything fell together nicely and within an hour I had this image.

I find that as I get older and more experienced in photography, I’m pre-visualizing photos much more. I still love going out, being spontaneous and taking what Mother Nature gives me, but there is a certain, wonderful feeling when you see an image in your mind, wait for the right conditions, and then make it a reality.

The Minarets in Black and White

February 3rd, 2010

I find it very interesting that I can look at one of my images and never see it any other way than how it currently is, but then one day I’ll look at it and see something totally different.

Last night I was glancing through some  older photos when this shot of the Minarets, in California’s Sierra Nevada, caught my attention. Now, I’ve had this image for 5 years and I’ve never imagined it as anything other than a color image, but when I looked at  it last night, I immediately saw it as a black and white and knew exactly how I wanted it to look.

It’s moments of inspiration like this, that keep my love of photography so strong. With the modern digital dark room anything is possible, and it’s a wonderful feeling to know that at any time one of my older images can be reborn.

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