More editing examples... Go back young man!!!

I keep saying over and over it's all about the editing. Yes yes yes, you should make the picture as fantastic as you can IN camera so you don't have to worry about editing later on, however lets just say for the sake of argument that you obtained entry into a tightly guarded urbex treasure and you only had ....say...2 hours to cover 14 floors plus a basement and a bell tower. Well ...you might be hurried. Add to that the fact that there's no electricity and perhaps you might or might not have slid through a grate into a basement window into pure darkness. Well, in instances such as these you might not exactly be having time to adjust your camera for every nuance of lighting because in addition to covering a good 425 rooms (if you hit them all) plus a spa and various other things like a ballroom and a bowling alley and blah blah blah...well you just don't have time to fiddle with settings all day. You shoot what you can in the time you have and then go through it all when you get home.

I went through this place close to two years ago. Tonight, because I was looking for something specific for a photo challenge, I came back to this gallery and saw all the items I had not worked up. And some that I had worked up that were not exactly fantastic. Mainly because I've learned a ton of new editing techniques since then.

So this one really caught my eye. I knew where it was, more or less, in the building and that it was in one of my favorite locales.

So I applied my "new knowledge" to editing it. Now it still sucks...don't get me wrong. But I'm just showing you what a difference five minutes in post can make. This is the before shot.

Can't really tell much about it can ya? Just a couple of dirty windows and not really any detail anywhere.

Same photo after 5 minutes in post processing. Not a great photo still but you can see the detail on the wall, you can see the view out the windows and you can see the detail in the ceiling which is freaking awesome. I totally love that ceiling. 

Anyway, this is just another example of how taking a crappy image into Lightroom and applying a few standard tweaks can render an image much more viewable. I still wouldn't think of winning a prize with it, but I can certainly tell more about it. 

I'll work on it more tomorrow and make it a masterpiece and then post that so you can see what even more time with a junky image can do. 

Ten points to anyone who can tell me where it is and why I love it. GO!!!

Black and White

"Doesn't matter if you're black or white."~ Michael Jackson

So this won't really be an informative post, not that anyone reads my posts for information about photography. Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone does read them but statistics show that some of you do so thank ya for that.

This post is basically going to be a conversation with myself about my general dislike for black and white imagery. Well, that's already not true. It's not that I don't like black and white images. I've seen a few in my time that were so breathtakingly beautiful that I never even for a second thought "Wow, wonder what this would look like in color...", but as a stark reality in my life, most of the time that is exactly what I think when I see a beautiful landscape in black and white. So maybe it's just landscapes that I hate to see in black and white.

One of the most dramatic pictures I've ever seen in my life was shot by a photographer who was once in a group I frequented called the "Texas Photo Forum" or "TPF" for short. I don't recall his real name. Even though I've now forgotten the name of his company as well, the pic he posted was one meant for contemplation and to stir emotions. It was in black and white. A man sitting on some dark wood steps, perhaps going up to a garage apartment or something. He was holding a shiny pistol loosely in one hand just kinda dangling it there near his feet with the other hand against his forehead as if he were fighting back the demons inside telling him to put an end to it all. Had that image been in color there is no way it would have had that dramatic impact that it had.

Portraits and architecture tend to be the only things that I enjoy in black and white. I joined a Black and White photo challenge recently to challenge myself to find decent images that I think would look good in black and white or to actually find a place to go and shoot something specifically in black and white but then I would never ever do that because ...."I wonder what that would look like in color."

So I picked a couple of shots and worked them up as black and white images and I almost like a couple of them. But ...I like them better in color. LOL

So that being said...

this was one of my submissions. 

It's ok. It's growing on me. Below is the same shot in color. I almost like the BW better in this shot. So maybe the BW movement is growing on me. Heck I don't know. 

The other I chose was one that seemed particularly boring in color so I thought...ehhh what the hell. 

It's actually gotten more votes than the other. Apparently, along with my inability to be able to draw and visualize how to paint a painting, I can't guess what will appeal to the masses. But hey...that's what makes us all who we are. Different people. 

Anyway that's my crazy black and white rant. As I said, it's growing on me in certain circumstances.