A Good and Gentle Man

[sm4him]

My Hero. My Dad.
Taken on Memorial Day (U.S.) at the local veteran's cemetery.

It was HOT; felt like about 112 degrees F. In the shade.
It was REALLY sunny; took these at about 2:30 p.m. or so. No escaping that due to other plans that day.

These were more challenging than I really expected, not just due to the harsh sunlight. Dad's grave is on a pretty steep slope. In one direction, the background shows the main building up at the top of the hill. Aim slightly to the right of that and you end up with trees growing up out of the graves (I mean, not literally...but there are trees in the background that end up LOOKING like they are growing out of the headstones). Aim to the left, or straight ahead and you get the cemetery road and/or nearby street in the background. Usually that's not so bad, but since it was Memorial Day, there were also cars parked all along the cemetery road and even out on the street, so you ended up getting cars in the background.

Still, I was pleased enough with the results. They were at least along the lines of what I was going for; a focus on my dad's headstone and the flag, but also showing how it looked with the flags erected at all the headstones. It never fails to move me.

Not really posting these for C&C, as they're really just more sentimental in nature, but C&C won't offend me, either. I wondered what they'd look like in black & white, but I just don't have the skills to create what I consider a decent b&w conversion.

 

[Trever1t]

A very emotional image. Thank you for sharing.

 

[HughGuessWho]

Nice story. Thank you for sharing.

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

Really like the lines and composition of #2.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[tirediron]

Very nice.

 

[sm4him]

Thanks to all those who responded! I hesitated to post these because of the personal nature of them, but I hoped that even though they are intensely personal to me, they would strike a chord with others as well, not because they knew my father, but for their own personal reasons.

 

[BlackSheep]

Lovely images, well done.

If you would like, I can do a B&W conversion for you, just let me know.

 

[TheKenTurner]

Wow these are great pictures, I'm not sure if I'm addicted to tilt-shift, but a tilt-shift lens for the second shot might have been cool just for something new to try! Once again though, great pictures

-ken Turner

 

[sm4him]

Lovely images, well done.

If you would like, I can do a B&W conversion for you, just let me know.

Thanks, BlackSheep; and if you wanted to do a B&W conversion--on either one of them--I'd be happy to let you! I really don't know whether I'd even like them in b&w, I just know I didn't like the way *I* did them in b&w (which was, open PS, open photo, go to adjustments and click "convert to black and white" or whatever it says...)

 

[sm4him]

Wow these are great pictures, I'm not sure if I'm addicted to tilt-shift, but a tilt-shift lens for the second shot might have been cool just for something new to try! Once again though, great pictures

-ken Turner

I don't own one of those; sounds like it would make me dizzy, all that tilting and shifting!
Just kidding; well, not about the not owning one part.

I've got a basic understanding of what a tilt-shift lens does, but not sure I can visualize how it would impact these, and whether I'd like the result. You must feel the way about tilt-shift that I do about macro--I just want to macro everything right now! I just couldn't quite figure out how to take an interesting macro shot of my dad's headstone. Not that I didn't try.

 

[BlackSheep]

If you have CS5, try using Image ->Adjustments -> Black and White, and then you can play with the colour sliders to get the B&W you prefer, going that route mimics how different B&W films were more/less sensitive to certain colours, as opposed to just stripping the colour out of the image.

Here's my B&W interpretation. I'm not sure if you will like them better than the colour versions, TBH I think the B&W makes them look more like a news story than a personal one. Maybe a warmer sepia might keep the personal impact better than plain B&W. Either way, my respects to your Dad

 

[sm4him]

If you have CS5, try using Image ->Adjustments -> Black and White, and then you can play with the colour sliders to get the B&W you prefer, going that route mimics how different B&W films were more/less sensitive to certain colours, as opposed to just stripping the colour out of the image.

Here's my B&W interpretation. I'm not sure if you will like them better than the colour versions, TBH I think the B&W makes them look more like a news story than a personal one. Maybe a warmer sepia might keep the personal impact better than plain B&W. Either way, my respects to your Dad

Thanks, BlackSheep; I did use the color slider adjustments, but since I hadn't really done it before, I was just not happy with the results. Yours look much better than mine did, but I agree--the color adds warmth which I think is especially important to the emotional aspect of the photos in this case.