Black and White and Off-Color – June 2012

In the course of processing the June photos I played around with some B&W options and some off-color work (don’t know what else to call it).

All of the pictures are duplicates of current SmugMug albums (see previous blog post), or of future SmugMug albums (see subsequent blog posts).  Consider this a poor preview of some of the insects and bee shots to come.

An example of a black and white treatment of a peony photograph.

A different Black and White treatment of another peony photograph.

This is what I call “off-color” treatment. Perhaps someone has a proper name for the technique.

The above is a “heavy treatment” . . . below is a more subtle one.

I wanted to make this appear as smoldering embers inside the flower.

This was before the fire event, so the effect was not influenced by the fire.

It works well with geraniums . . . at least I think so.

Yet another thing I tried . . . this is purple verbena.

. . . and bee balm . . .

. . . the remnants of a poppy . . .

. . . another peony . . .

. . . a spider that was hanging around the salvia . . .

. . . and bees feasting on the salvia.

I think it worked very well on the bee photographs.

I tried different things on different flowers . . . 

A washed out color treatment . . .

. . . changing the tonality and hues of the original . . .

Them be big words I’m using.  Actually, I don’t know what it’s called.  I changed stuff until it looked interesting.

I played with extreme Black and White trying to make it look like metal (I did not succeed in getting exactly the look I wanted).

But I thought I came close.

I think I need to play with the texture as well as tweaking the adjustments.

This to me looks a bit like pewter.

I liked how the geraniums responded to the tweaking.

The bee balm did not do too bad either.

The day lilies offered many choices.

From the dramatic . . .

. . . to the nostalgic.

I liked many of these photos, but for just B&W, this one is probably the one I like the best.

It came out just right . . . at least for this photo.

All of these were adjustments in Lightroom . . . I presume I could do more in Photoshop, but that takes time.  Maybe someday, but playing in Lightroom is quick and fun.

All of these, and more, can be found in the associated SmugMug gallery.  Click HERE or on any of the photos to go there.

Eidted To Add:  I missed the opportunity!  This could have been titled “Goth Flowers”!  Maybe next time.

As usual, thanks for visiting, looking, and reading my stuff.

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