This beautiful building is the Old Ship Church in Hingham, Massachusetts. Also known as the Old Ship Meeting House, it is the oldest church continuously used for ecclesiastical purposes in the United States. The church was built in 1681 and is now the only Puritan Meeting House still in existence in North America. The church spire is the only surviving example of the 17th Century English Gothic style in North America.
When I set out to photograph this church, I was already thinking black and white. Something dating back to the 1680s really doesn't work for me in color. Besides, I suspect the Puritans would frown on anything colorful associated with this building, so, in true Puritan style, I kept it plain. Almost.
In Topaz Adjust, I ran it through a filter that really brought out the color, then added a gradient map layer in Photoshop for the black and white conversion. A duplicate of the Topaz layer in 50% soft light blend brought out some contrast, but I then added a surface blur to that overlay to soften the tones a bit. Two separate sepia filters were used at various points, and I used a contrast adjustment to dramatically reduce the contrast in the image. The texture you see here was a grey patterned fill layer using a 60% multiply blend mode. Several level adjustments at various points completed the image.
