Two black and whites redone

[elTwitcho]

Decided to come back to these shots about a month later now that I'm thinking about black and white a little different. Originally I couldn't get these two shots to turn out how I'd envisioned them in my head, but tonight I tried something a bit different and got them how I wanted. Both on an overcast october day which I *believe* was the first day I took out my 28-105 F3.5-4.5 lense.

Comments or critique are welcome.

http://www.pbase.com/eltwitcho/image/52809906.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/eltwitcho/image/52810356.jpg

[quickben]

Toronto looks like a stunning city. What's the best time of year to visit ?

Gary.

[Big_B]

The second one is great!

[kenyc]

Love #2!!

KAC

[Actionphotog]

Very nice photos nice composition too.
Would love to see more.

[DwightMcCann]

Yup, whatever you did (you should really share it) really makes them snap~! Very, very nice.

[condyk]

More snap that a croc. Nice efforts!

[adam*]

Love #2

[elTwitcho]

quickben I'm almost tempted to say "never" honestly ;) The winter's are way too cold and the summers are way too smoggy and hot. The city itself is beatiful, but I tend to wonder about the rationale the founding members of the city had when they said "no let's not move southwards gentlemen, let us simply wear a few more layers of beaver pelt"...

Honestly though, if you can handle the occasionally poor air quality, there is alot going on in the months of june, july and august. June is probably nicest since it doesn't get too hot then and there are still events going on worth checking out.

BigB, Kenny, Actionphotog Thanks guys. Glad you enjoyed them.

Dwight I'm almost hesitant to share what I did since it's my own method I came up with myself and well, it's not a case of wanting to keep trade secrets, rather a case of me still figuring out photoshop and worrying I'm going to teach someone a completely overlycomplicated way of doing things.

BUT, for those foolish enough to take my half baked processing tips and try them, it's pretty simple.

What I essentially did, is made multiple layer copies as I needed them (which I'll explain in a second) and used each layer for a range of tones or section of the image. For example, in the second image I had one layer for the foreground, one layer for the sky and skyscrapers, and one layer for the middle buildings (there were a couple others but that's the basic gist). For each section, I then adjusted the curves to bring out the look I wanted each section to have. The sky I wanted fairly high contrast and wanted to bring out the mid tones and not have a ton of shadow, so I made a curve that would correspond to this. For the middle buildings I wanted most of it to be mid tones and shadows and shift the highlights downwards (basically darkening them) so I made an appropriate curve. The important thing to remember is that I made curves for SPECIFIC SECTIONS of the image, so while the one curve looks great for the sky, it made the foreground look like hell. Keeping that in mind, I used layer masks to paint in the appropriate sections for each layer so that the rights parts of the right layers would show through.

Overcomplicated? Probably. It's really just a more involved version of dodging and burning, but I find the result is much nicer.

Thanks as well condy and Adam

Glad you guys liked them, and if my convoluted method is of any use to anyone, all the better :) I'll be glad to explain more if someone is interested as well

[BottomBracket]

Hey El Twitcho, I really love these conversions. I was going to say dodging and burning, but your layer masking procedure does justice to the pics. Gotta love those layers! great work.

[rab3rd]

Hey El Twitcho, I really love these conversions. I was going to say dodging and burning, but your layer masking procedure do justice to the pics. Gotta love those layers! great work.


Sorry this is a bit off topic.

BB I have a bridgestone, Racer X, Sugar 1, HooKooEKoo, Airborne, and a Jamis. Do you race?

[DwightMcCann]

El ... I understand completely ... I sometimes have to do this to faces in my casino stuff ... select out a face and do levels on it with because it is too light (due to a spotlight) or too dark (due to shadows) and the images are always significantly better ...and this works in color, no less! :-)

Rab3rd, I got a Specialized StumpJumper and a Giant OCR1 ... but I don't race, they're just for exercise when I get a chance.