Dark Skies

I'm sure to many of you, Silver Efex Pro is old news.  I've know about the software for a while now, but had been content with using the tools built into Lightroom.  I took the plunge recently and installed Silver Efex Pro to see what it could do for me, and what a world of difference.  It's almost like being in the darkroom again.  Being able to selectively work with parts of the images to control exposure and contrast is great.

The images below were processed with the new (to me) software; I believe they may be a bit over processed, but I don't really care.  Experimenting is part of the process of learning the new tool.  I'm sure over time I'll dial it back again.

Click on images for larger views

   

As always, thanks for taking a look.  Comments and critiques are always welcome.

So much for posting every week.

It's been a while since I've posted anything and I'd like to have a great excuse for not doing so.  However, I don't have a good excuse.  I'm just lazy. I shot medium format film for the longest time and processed my own film. Sometimes I'd have a darkroom to print photos, but usually not.  Negatives quite often got processed but would go unprinted.  I've started scanning some of the negatives into my computer using an epson V600 scanner.  Some of these negatives are 15 years old and this is the first time I'm seeing them as a positive image, which makes the slow and boring process of scanning worthwhile.  Unfortunately, my record keeping was non existent, so I have no idea when or where many of the images where taken.

I'm not sure what it is, but there is a certain quality to the images from negatives that I don't seem to get in my digital images.  The combination of grain and graduation of tone is something I really like about these scanned negatives.

The images below are fairly typical of what I've done for a long time with my photography.  Kind of an urban landscape type of photography.

Since my records are non-existent, I believe the following images were taken in the late 90's outside of Salt Lake City.  I do know that they were shot with a Pentax 67 on T-Max 400 film, then recently scanned using a Epson V-600 scanner.

Demacks Produce

True to my word, I went out and took some pictures this week.  This is of a building in the downtown area of Galveston, Texas.  Writing about my pictures is proving much harder than actually taking them.  I must have typed and deleted 30 sentences by now.  Back in college in my photography courses, I continually had to talk about and critique my work as well as others.  I'm pretty sure that is a skill I'll need to relearn as I go through with this blog.  For now, I'll keep it simple and say that I've always enjoyed taking pictures of old and worn out things.  I believe that I find the textures found in older objects adds an extra element to the form of the photographs.

Thanks for the comments, likes, and encouragement on the last post. Knowing that someone even noticed that I started this page helped get me out shooting last week.