Jon Rendell tagged me on the b&w challenge a couple of weeks ago, and now I’ve been tagged by Jeremy Witteveen. However, because I’ve been transitioning from Apple’s Aperture to Adobe Lightroom, I’ve decided to revisit some of my favourite b&w’s to see how well I can reprocess them in Lightroom. I also thought I’d provide a bit of commentary for each image, to give my readers some insight into what I like about them, and the process that went into creating them (I know I appreciate this sort of commentary from other photographers so, hopefully, my comments will be interesting to you).
Day 1’s image was taken a couple of years ago in Edmonton’s Central LRT station. It’s long been a popular image of mine, and was even chosen as a book cover. I call it “Double Tunnel Vision”.
In my opinion, this is perfect subject matter for a b&w photo. It’s got a tremendous range of tones, all the way from bright whites to very dark blacks. Likewise for textures – another often sought after element in b&w photography. The walls of the tunnel are rough, while the smoothness of the tracks and ductwork provide a nice counter-balance.
From a technical standpoint, the photo is a win because I was able to hand-hold at 1/8th of a second while standing up, and the image is still tack-sharp at f2.8. I was happy with how I was able to process this image in Aperture, but Lightroom did do a better job – thanks to it’s superior mask sharpening and clarity tools.
I hope you enjoyed this post. Tomorrow we will move into the country for something a little bit different.
I found your comments very interesting. Will be watching for more.