Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III__EF70-200mm f/2.8L USM__1.5 sec at f / 22__ISO 100
For the past couple of months, I have been watching this calla plant growing in my living/dining room area. The light comes through two different windows to light the leaves to various effect. This past Sunday, I finally saw a composition worth setting up for. I hung up my black piece of velvet on the wall behind these leaves. I left my camera set up and made frames when I saw interesting light. I downloaded the images, looked at the new images, and was not particularly inspired by the results.
Yesterday, four days later, I looked at the images again with Lightroom. Then it hit me that there was real potential here, made several adjustments to this image, including converting the image to BW. Bingo! I polished up the file this morning in Photoshop this morning. Here is the result!
Enjoy, Bill
For more of my BW work, see my Meditations in Monochrome ebook!
February 17, 2011 at 3:01 PM
Bill, this is stunning, with amazing texture and a wonderful emotive energy. I believe you are teaching us all a valuable lesson that revisiting shots that previously have seemed unexceptional can really surprise us. Of course, 99% of my images are waiting on my external hard drive to be “discovered”!
Thank you for sharing this…
Cindy
January 30, 2011 at 4:37 PM
Love this image. The contrast between the inky black background and the delicate veins in the leaves is astounding. Have you considered trying this with an infrared film effect? Would love to see how different that looks…..
January 30, 2011 at 10:40 AM
I didn’t “see” this image as BW when making it, but it sure works best in BW.
Thanks for the comments!
Bill
January 29, 2011 at 10:29 PM
Black and white is definitely a great solution for this one. It pulls the image out of the realm of reality — which draws more attention to light and form.
January 28, 2011 at 11:11 PM
Lovely image. Properly process an average looking image could turn up really nice. I think that’s the wisdom of mastering your post processes.
January 28, 2011 at 1:32 PM
Bill, thanks for posting that. We all need to remember that our images may have fine potential beyond what we originally expected. We just have to keep exploring the possibilities.