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Ladders - black and white interpretation

Lars

Active member
Two reasons for this post:
Would like some purely subjective/artistic evaluation, and
Interpretation was made with Joey (my own software), would like some feedback on the technical aspects of the b/w conversion.

Original: Grandagon 90/6.8 (borrowed from Geary Lyons I think) on 4x5 VS. Ghost town just outside Zion N.P., Per Volquartz' Zion workshop, October 2004. Ebony 45S.

Something went wrong in the E-6 development, the blackpoint especially for the red layer is very high. The b/w conversion was adjusted to amplify tonal separation based on color in the original, thus a blue-green filter was used. Final interpretation involved a dramatic hardness boost (that's "contrast" to you purely digital folks ;)) and some slight sharpening, to give the final image some texture and grit.

Lars
 
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M

moggi1964

Guest
My humble opinion:

The B&W has atmosphere and in my mind is the better of the two. It has a 'harshness' in the grain (sorry I am new to photography so my language isn't technical and may not even make sense) but I feel that works for this setting.

I don't know if there is any further data in the ground section that would perhaps give some depth to that area. It is a little flat even in the B&W shot as mentioned by Ben in reference to the colour one.
 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Wow! The B&W looks awesome to me, even more so seeing what it was derived from!

:thumbs:
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
You could of course boost the contrast in the colour version as you have with the B&W conversion to make it less flat and then see which is better.
 

Lars

Active member
Morris -
Yes, I think the texture in this photo is really important. Harshness sounds great to me :) welcome to the forum! Being a 4x5 scanned at 80 megapixels, it's got a lot of detail in the wood grain and the dirt on the ground.

Just to clarify, the color version above is a straight scan, unedited except for color space conversion and resizing. Just setting the proper blackpoint brings back a lot of detail in shadows and midtones, and makes the warm hues in the wood really vibrate (in a semi-natural, E100VS way :)). I'll see if I can make an edited color version later today.

The blue ghost in the middle is a lens flare - I have tried to remove it but haven't built the right tool for that yet. It's possible that it could be cloned away, but it's a rather large area so I have my doubts.
 
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