fun with black and white

[lordfly]

Right, so I'm very new to this whole "serious photography" thing. I'm not nearly confident enough to take pictures of actual people, so whenever I go out shooting, I tend to go towards the quieter areas - in this case, an abandoned paper plant.

It was a rather "nice" day for photography today - chilly, but not windy, overcast with just a bit of sun. Can't really expect much better in Michigan in the middle of February.

I shot completely in RAW this time, in color. The camera was set to very wide aperture (5.6), ISO 100, and hand-held for the most part. I wanted to try my hand at post processing, hence the RAW.

This is the first picture I processed; I cropped out the sky and rotated the frame some (I'm apparently crooked when I look through the viewfinder), and of course converted it to black and white. I practically zeroed out the red channel and tweaked some of the other ones, fiddled with the exposure some. I'm not *entirely* sure of what I'm doing, but I think it turned out okay.

Compositionally it could have been better (there was a nice window on the right hand side I didn't get completely), but I do like the contrast between the natural and the artificial.

Comments welcome, of course; I want to see if I'm doing this whole B&W stuff right.

Here's the medium size version, I'll link to the higher-res version separately (not sure how big we're allowed to hot link here)

sooper dooper high res: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2582/4331478040_d3bd141ec1_o.jpg

 

[fokker]

Its a pretty good looking photo, though I must say the subject matter is not hugely interesting. But that can't always be helped, can it?

 

[dxqcanada]

Not bad for your first time ... needs more contrast.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

I'd crop out the window on the right side.

 

[thebeatles]

I'd crop out the window on the right side.

+1

I like the photo otherwise. :thumbup:

 

[lordfly]

Its a pretty good looking photo, though I must say the subject matter is not hugely interesting. But that can't always be helped, can it?

I constantly harbor romantic fantasies of these abandoned buildings holding vast piles of interesting pipes, furniture, crevices, and other machinery. Alas, this one was mostly empty, save for some illegal dumping and tarps.

There were also a lot of signs stating that the place was practically made entirely from asbestos, so I thought it best not to break in and inhale some mesothelioma.

I have more pictures, I'll post the more interesting ones once I'm done fiddling with them.

 

[lordfly]

I was out tromping around a few days ago with a friend (he brought along a 1957 Soviet-made Exakta SLR), and decided to check out the bike/walk path. Lots of dead/hibernating trees, obviously. The only thing of any real color were these little berries, sitting there wilting on a branch.

I tried touching it up in PS a bit, saturating the berry color and making everything else darker and B&W.

I'm sure it's cliche, but I don't think it's that bad.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

You could keep the whole stick the berries are on, in color.