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This cold, bleak, windswept and rain lashed shingle beach is at Bray, just to the south of Dublin on Ireland's east coast.
My wife Liz and I were visiting friends in the town, and we always make a point of taking a bracing walk along the seafront, whatever the weather.
As usual I was toting my camera and tripod, so while Liz took shelter in a convenient cafe I braved the elements looking for good stuff to photograph.
The colours and light were pretty flat, so I had monochrome in mind, looking for patterns of light and dark that didn't rely on colour to make a composition work.
The good thing about monochrome images is that they will take a lot more contrast than colour will, as the colours in a colour image will tend to block up and look really ghastly as the contrast is cranked up with an 'S' curve in PhotoShop.
To convert these images to monochrome in a way that brought out the drama of the scene I used a multi stage process in PhotoShop, starting with a hue-saturation layer followed by a channels layer with the convert to monochrome check box ticked.
I then went back to the hue/saturation layer and played with the hue slider until the monochrome image had the overall tonality that I wanted. I then adjusted the saturation slider up, which had the effect of increasing the contrast in the monochrome image, till I was happy with the drama level in the scene.
Next I added a photo filter layer to give a warm tone to the image. I find warming monochrome images up a little makes them look more three dimensional, but maybe that's just me.
Next I altered local contrast by using multiple curves adjustment layers and masks, and finished off by adding a vignette to draw attention to the subjects in the images.
I was tempted to show the original colour images straight out of the RAW converter as a 'before and after' comparison, but in the end I decided not to, as I didn't want to draw attention away from the mood of the monochrome conversions.
Filename - beach branch 01.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 24mm
Exposure - 1/3sec @ f16, ISO100
Location - Bray, Ireland
This image - 640x800px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Tripod, mirror lockup and cable release used to prevent camera movement.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2024 unless otherwise stated.