(V) (I) Landscape Photography Tutorial: Duluth Harbor Black and White

7 Comments

1. Posted October 13, 2009 at 9:28 am by Chet | Permalink

   Alec, Thank you. Nice job on the B & W tutorial. I’ve been playing with some of my North Shore images looking to achieve the soft smooth water effect that you have gotten. I look forward to being on Superior during the next storm.
   Chet

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   • Posted October 14, 2009 at 5:10 am by Alec | Permalink

     Hi Chet,

     Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully we’ll be there together shooting!

     Reply
2. Posted October 20, 2009 at 2:36 pm by Travis | Permalink

   Great shot, and nicely done tutorial!

   Travis

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3. Posted December 17, 2009 at 9:19 pm by Barry | Permalink

   Alec,

   Great tutorial, but I have some questions if you don’t mind. I’m not sure that I see the purpose for the Blue-Gold polarizer (of course, I’m trying to save some cash!) It seems like you could have toned two versions of the same photograph after the fact in Photoshop by using the Photoshop filters, for example. Perhaps even using a separate curves layer on each version to darken the sky and lighten the water without using complementary colors at all. I could see the value of the filter more so if you could have achieved the tonal separation in one photograph instead of having to take two. Thank you so much.

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   • Posted December 18, 2009 at 7:26 am by Alec | Permalink

     Hi Barry,

     THANK YOU for being here and for your post. Let me try to address your points separately. First, I want to say that there is no ONE way to do this and I’m open to other ways to accomplish the degree I like to accomplish WHILE minimizing noise and banding in an image…

     1) Blue/Gold: I like this because it gives a strong magenta/yellow (despite its name) cast to an image. Especially in twilight. My experience suggests that I can get cleaner (lower noise), higher contrast tones in the black and white conversion. I can push magenta and yellow tones around much more than I can blues;

     2) PS Filters: Maybe?

     3) Curves/Levels, etc: My experience suggests that to move the tonalities to the point I have in those ways results in a really beat up file, banding, noise. The print and monitor quality of the file is much higher if one starts with a color scheme that lends itself to these ranges of tone. If one wants to go this route its really going to come down to a feel and quality choice of the artist. I’ve tried it, I didn’t like it, others may find it a great choice.

     4) Using a raw conversion to get color separation is a good option, but I’m STILL (and I’m told erroneous) of the belief that what you get in a color histogram shooting the color you want vs. creating it in the raw converter are at least marginally different in the amount and type of information the image file contains. On of the things I see happen regularly in a raw conversion from daylight to tungsten, for example, is a significant loss of contrast of the file. This is often counterproductive for what I’m doing.

     So, to really do it with one, in my opinion, with the subject matter I like to shoot, in the light I like to shoot in, I shoot two files or one file and two raw conversions, the latter being a lower quality route, but a reasonable one.

     THANKS again Barry. You’re comments and questions are appreciated.

     Happy Holidays,
     Alec

     Reply
4. Posted May 20, 2010 at 10:52 am by Gabriel Walker | Permalink

   we always redo our landscape every 2 or 3 months to adapt to the changing weather.-:;

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5. Posted June 14, 2010 at 1:06 pm by charles binns landscape photography | Permalink

   Great tutorial. To be honest I am still a film fanatic – though I do shoot digital every once in a while. This tutorial will really help me there.

   Reply