Manhole cover

I’d like to think that this image is well balanced, even though it contains only opposites: warm red and cool blue colors, tight circles and long curves, metal and stone, man-made bricks and natural granite…

Fall Colors on a Gray Day

It’s been raining all day long in Hamburg and apparently it will rain again tomorrow, so here is an attempt to brighten up your day. A stained-glass window as replacement for the missing fall colors…

A Storm is Approaching

A few friends have commented on my recent post with the apple images. Apparently I was so excited about experimenting with black and white that I didn’t notice how much impact the color image lost through the black-and-white conversion. I see their point, but to be honest, I think the black-and-white image wins at least as much from the added texture and stronger overall contrast.

Today I’ve chosen a different image for practicing, and I hope you all will agree that the black and white image is much stronger than the color one.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Three Colorful Construction Scenes

The sky was discouragingly cloudy this morning, and if I hadn’t promised two friends to go out photographing with them, I probably would have stayed at home. But a promise is a promise, so I swung the camera bag around my shoulder and went to meet them. At the exact moment when we met, the sun came out and the light and the mood changed significantly. We decided to look for photo motives in the Hafencity.

Here is a series of three images that caught my attention at one of the numerous construction sites. Quite apparently it is the color combination that holds the images together.

Apples in Black-and-White

I am getting more and more fascinated by black and white. Unfortunately also a bit frustrated because I don’t yet get the results that I want, but I am slowly getting better!

Here is a conversion that I did last night. I started with this extremely nice image taken by a friend of mine. It was hard to give up the pretty fall colors, but I decided to go looking for contrast and patterns instead.

First I straightened the verticals, then cropped to 4:3 and converted to black and white in the channel mixer. I then added several layers: increase of the overall contrast, increase of the contrast of the apples even more, then lighten the wooden table a bit. All three layers have masks for limiting the effects to portions of the image only. Finally I added a dodge and burn layer where I did some final adjustments. A bit of lens blur across the top and in the lower right corner and some sharpening of the rest, and the image was done.

Well, done for now. Who knows what I think of tomorrow…