Half-Life
I am continuing on with my series of images for submission to the BLACK+WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY Magazine's challenge to explore alternate processing methods, and I'd decided to share an Ambrotype image with you, but really disliked the way it looked. The tone range was really flat and the whole thing just looked muddy. I simply applied the Ambrotype preset in Silver Efex Pro. Never again, will I do that.* Not sure I can get away with entering this image into the challenge, although the final processing step is a cross balance from daylight to tungsten.
This image I like enough to want to share. Some of the minute details escape me regarding the post processing as some of it was done on the train this morning and I finished it off this evening. It's a TIFF conversion from the RAW file taken off my Leica D-Lux 4. Taken on a ridiculously sunny English summer day in April 2010, focusing on a hedge with a rather bizarre cut to it. In fact, this tree in the foreground is actually visible on the far left of a previous photograph taken in the same location on the same day, Beneath an Ashen Sky.
Something I found particularly effective before converting to black and white, was to apply a "Contrast Color Range" in PhotoTools Pro. This really brings out the gradient in the sky, that would usually look very flat and that translates into a very dull area in a black and white print. The black and white "Chrome" effect in PhotoTools Pro is also incredible when making the conversion to monochrome. Not only does it boost the darks, but it also gives them more definition, if that's even the correct word. Embarrassingly, I can't remember (or find) the effect I used to pull out more detail in the foreground. It's not a high-pass sharpener, but it does isolate the highs before doing it's work. It's what gave the dirt road it's detail.
* - we'll see.
