Loughs and Walkways

Ballyman

Went a bit mental over the last two days taking photos of Loughs and walkways into them as I'm working in Mayo and the place is full of them. I have enough now to last me a lifetime. Here is two of them.

wasper

This was taken last Friday outside Coachford, Co.Cork

Dragan

Ballyman, they are very nice indeed.

Beautiful B&W conversion. Do you mind me asking how you went about it, or are we treading on trade secrets here?:)

kjt

Dragan wrote: »

Ballyman, they are very nice indeed.

Beautiful B&W conversion. Do you mind me asking how you went about it, or are we treading on trade secrets here?:)

I'd be interested too, really nice shots and conversions!!

Crispin

kjt wrote: »

I'd be interested too, really nice shots and conversions!!

+1

really nice conversions, would love to know the secret

kgiller

Excellent shots Ballyman. Really like them both. Nice processing too. I rather shots without people in them, but the first one works well.

Morrisseeee

Yeah, love the processing, also....looking at your flickr link I really like the other one: Lough Owel - Mullingar.
Pls tell us your secret BW processing, as I went googly-eyed (& mental !)the last few days trying to do BW conversions.

Ballyman

I don't have the exact settings as I'm on my work computer but the gist of them are:

The light was very poor and this is why they are B&W and not colour.

So, I used a 2 or 3 stop ND Grad on camera and exposed for the foreground. Then in Lightroom, added another 1-2 stop ND grad filter for the sky. This really blackens it up and gives it the stormy kind of look. Obviously you need a few clouds in the sky to begin with for it to work right.

I increased the contrast and blacks pretty high also and played around with exposure and brightness to bring back as much lost detail as I could while trying to keep the image as dark as poossible. As you can see, I've pretty much lost a lot of detail in the far away detail so this is difficult to do.

Then play around with the RGB sliders until I have something I am reasonably happy with.
And finally, the most important bit, I added a very slight vignette!! -10 on the slider

Sín sín.

dreamer_ire

Both are very good but the first one is stunning!

Ballyman

kgiller wrote: »

Excellent shots Ballyman. Really like them both. Nice processing too. I rather shots without people in them, but the first one works well.

Here it is without the "fisherman"

fluffyVW

Wonderful shots and great b&w Ballyman!!!

Valentia

Class work Ballyman and thanks for the explanation.

FinoBlad

I recognise the 2nd one in your first post, they are all great images. Well done.