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Friday Slide Show: A Walk In The Rain
28 October 2016
With a storm moving in yesterday, we grabbed the pancho and a camera and snuck out of the bunker for a couple of hours. The autumn sky was overcast, colors more intense, tones flat. Things would look different.
And they did. Right away. We spied Mount Tamalpais to the north at the corner looking regal. We can never get that shot. We walk to the edge of the hill and somehow lose it. So today we stayed back, across the street and got the little mailbox scene in front of the mountain.
We liked it in color, which is how we saw it, but we thought it might work even better in black and white. So we tried it and, yep, we liked the monochrome version better.
That was going to be an issue for nearly every shot in the sequence. Color or black-and-white?
Post processing was rather subdued compared to our usual recipes.
This time, though, it would only be decided on a case-by-case basis.
Some things like the Trick or Treat pumpkins simply did not survive without color. Orange and black, to be precise.
But our red rose in the rain was another story. Red is the most difficult hue to capture digitally. It tends to be oversaturated and unreal. Even our overcast, rainy sky didn't overcome that issue completely.
But the black-and-white version is luminous. So they're both in the show.
There are a few skeletons and Clancey's pumpkin patch, too. 'Tis the season, after all.
Post processing was rather subdued compared to our usual recipes. We just kept an eye on the darker tones to make sure there was some separation between black and the darker shadows. And we made sure the highlights had some detail.
Generally the shots were underexposed so that wasn't much of an issue.
The monochrome conversions were enhanced by using the color sliders. The stone wall was most subjected to this to bump up the contrast, darkening the wall and lightening the foliage.
That's why you shoot in color and save Raw files. You can get to black-and-white from there easily and with independent control over the tone conversion for each color.
It's about to rain again. The pancho is dry, the battery charged, the afternoon free. See you later!
