Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Washington, Connecticut

Monochrome

In comments on the recent snow series posted here, there's been some discussion about whether the nearly monochrome color is a benefit, or whether perhaps it would be better to convert the pictures to full monochrome. I was thinking about this Monday as I struggled along the precarious path along the Shepaug River at Hidden Valley. We've had weird weather with alternating days of unseasonable warmth following nights with near 0°F temperatures. The warm air creates masses of fog. The combination of high precipitation levels and frozen ground has led to widespread flooding. I've found in the past that roaring flood waters make lovely elements of b&w pictures, but even the nicest pattern of swirling yellow-green-brown muddy water isn't very appealing in color. So I thought in terms of b&w, and converted the digital captures. Above is the ice-bound path north along river, and here's the spot I wanted to reach:


Washington, Connecticut

2 comments:

Ernest Theisen said...

These are both lovely in full monochrome. Great compositions. Carl I really liked the soft gentle color in the previous snow images. I wonder how they would look in full monochrome. Also, how did you do the conversion. E

Carl Weese said...

Ernie,

The two shots that Scott mentioned, both with lots of detail, look good in mono. The ones with lots of smooth open areas really lose something when you take the color away.

I did the conversions with the tool in ACR (third panel), set to default, not auto. Then the basic adjustments in the first panel needed a lot of adjustment from the settings that were correct for the full color versions.