Friday, August 03, 2012

Channeling Ansel Adams

From August 3, 2012
I hiked over to the Dykeman Springs Wetlands Park and Walking Trail after laundry this morning with a specific goal in mind: black and white photos in Nature. But this time I wanted to experiment. Usually I take pictures in color and convert to b&w because I really haven't liked what my camera's b&w mode produced. But on thinking it over, I realized I'd just been setting the camera on b&w and doing the old point-and-shoot. So today I fiddled until I got what looked like credible b&w shots in the viewfinder; I set the ISO on 400 in an attempt to get the look and feel of Kodak Tri-X 400, the workhorse film of professional photographers (including Adams) in the golden age of b&w photography, and I fooled with f-stop and shutter speed (just as I do in color shooting). To my delight, they produce the same quality as the photos that I convert in Photoshop. Of course I did the usual tweaking in Photoshop, as any old-time photographer would tweak things in the darkroom. Five shots ended up passing quality control: the Cabbage White butterfly on Thistle above; some Daisy Fleabane; Swamp Honeysuckle; two juvenile Mallards on one of the duck ponds; and a shot of vines and other foliage gradually enveloping an old concrete wall in Middle Spring Creek. Enjoy!

From August 3, 2012

From August 3, 2012

From August 3, 2012

From August 3, 2012

© 2012 by A. Roy Hibinger

7 comments:

  1. Hi Roy! My tweet of this photo essay made it into an electronic daily: (left side, halfway down): http://paper.li/jerOm_Lh/1308154981

    Ann

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  2. I saw a butterfly flutter by and thought of you. Actually, saw you on Linked In today but since it's never bought me any luck with jobs...just closed it. Lovely pics as always. I'm dying for spring, it's so frosty and cold here. Days are lovely but the nights are witch's tits.

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  3. Interesting Roy, I continue to learn a lot from your technique - both in front of the viewfinder and in the digital darkroom.

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