It was raining pretty hard, today, and for some reason I really struggle finding decent locations for a Photo a Day shot when the weather is bad. Today I forced myself to dismiss the weather entirely and go to a spot I'd had on my list for a while. This dilapidated shack is at the junctions of Routes 104 and 7 in North Smithfield. I've no idea what it is or was used for, although the somewhat hidden sign makes it clear it's owned by the State. I've wanted to shoot this for some time, and I've considered a number of different ways to present it. I may do a number of different shots here because of the wide range of possibilities.
I finally opted for a black and white presentation, today. Part of the reason I went this route is that I find black and white to be extremely difficult to do well and it's therefore a skill I need to enhance. Since color imaging became the norm, the ability to tell a story with black and white has become a lost art. Today, we find ourselves trying to present a black and white photo with an intentional "old photo" feel to it. That's become almost second nature now since most "how to" guides will tell you to add a sepia tone to get that feel. For that reason alone I tend to resist a sepia feel to my black and whites. I want them to feel new and crisp. I want the contrast to leap off the screen at you. I want the photo to invoke an emotion other than nostalgia.
Post processing started out in Topaz Adjust. I used a "clarity" filter to draw out the color tones, producing almost an HDR effect in the first layer. From there, I added an unsharp mask layer at 100% with a 1.0 pixel radius. More than that produced too harsh an image, and less than that didn't emphasize the contrast in the final image, so I settled on the settings listed above. From there I added a gradient adjustment to convert the image to black and white. A levels adjustment produced the deep black and stark white I want in all of my black and white images. At two different points in the process, I applied a deep blue filter, and finally a blue filter. I found that, of all the filters, they did the best job of increasing contrast while producing almost a glossy effect in the photo.
