B&W: Electric Tower

[Kevan]

Before I over process this photo to oblivion, I thought I'd throw this out to you folk to chew on. I'm finding the subtlities of B&W more difficult to master than color. I'm using PSE6, you can guess the camera, and this is an abused RAW file. Bright sunny day, sun glare from the bottom left, no cloud cover at all. Iwas hoping to achieve a steely appearance, good definition and not a washed out sky.

Any thoughts, recommendations? I've got another similar shot done later in the day. I'll go beat on it and submit it shortly. The composition of that later shot is a bit different.

Thanks.

[kmorgan]

I like this shot. All the lines make for some neat manipulation. I did 3. First I added contrast, then I used 2 filters. Glowing edges and trace contour. I think the glowing edges gives a feeling of electricity to the image....

1. More Contrast
http://inlinethumb47.webshots.com/17198/2489501270100209210S600x600Q85.jpg

2. Glowing Edges filter added
http://inlinethumb12.webshots.com/32139/2890093200100209210S600x600Q85.jpg

3. and finally, one with Trace Contours
http://inlinethumb10.webshots.com/41801/2192577290100209210S600x600Q85.jpg

Regards,
Kevin

[Robert_Lay]

Your G9 is doing a good job.
When I look at your image histogram (in PSCS3), I see a range of tones from 29 through 200. That says that the center tone of that range is about 115, which is around 1 stop under-exposed. The appearance of the image as rendered here is consistent with the metrics - i.e, it looks underexposed and has low contrast.

You say that you want it to look steely, which to me means more contrast overall, but the problem is that the sky is brighter than the steel highlights.

In order for you to get the effect that you want (steel highlights brighter than sky), you need an entirely different approach. The sky must be darkened or the steel must be brightened. No processing in Photoshop is going to be able to do that without some very significant effort.

My approach would be to get back from the towers so that you are not shooting into the overhead sky. I would shoot in the direction that gives me sun on my back and at an angle such that the sun is making the main elements of the towers glisten. Here they are essentially silhouetted. I would also use a yellow filter in order to darken the sky as much as possible. A polarizer filter may do just as well, but the yellow may be more even across a wide band of sky.

[Kevan]

Thanks Kevin (kinda hard to type that i in there),

Here's my second attempt I threatened to post here. This time I stayed away from the B&W conversion and instead played with the color correction and blew most of the color out.

[Kevan]

Thanks Robert, I totally agree. I think the idea of using a filter is spot on. I think too a revisit to the towers is in order; I'll need to find a different tower in order to get my back to the sun, due to site limitations.

[Robert_Lay]

Thanks Robert, I totally agree. I think the idea of using a filter is spot on. I think too a revisit to the towers is in order; I'll need to find a different tower in order to get my back to the sun, due to site limitations.

Lighting is everything!

Good Luck!