More mono pics from late 2008. Feel free to comment.

Rod Bird

^ Taken this afternoon, 31 Dec 08, near Reading Prison. Putting a big sign saying "Oh Beautiful World..." right outside the inmates' solitary window seems to be rubbing it in a bit.

The blueish tint in the river seen through the fence was a curious side effect of the conversion to a JPEG: it's not visible in the original PSD file. (It was an RGB file with a very slight red/green cast applied to warm it up. Had it been a greyscale file I'm sure this wouldn't have happened).

^ Taken two days after Christmas near a footpath across Hyde Farm, a mile north west of Pinkneys Green. I processed the same RAW file twice, once for the foreground and once for the sky, then combined them in Elements. I wanted the merest hint of tone in the sky, just enough to see the cloud above the middle tree, as I thought that was appropriate to a cold, bright winter's day. It was tempting to go the whole nuts-out HDR route but in my opinion that would have looked too artificial here.

The fake "negative holder rebate" edge was added at the end, as I wanted it to look like it was done on film. Had I been doing a professional job (fat chance!) I'd have filled the white edge with the same grey that's used on this website. (Fortunately John Ashford saved me the bother - see below. Thanks John).

^ Burchetts Green. I took several shots as there was obviously a wealth of graphical shapes and textures from which to construct a photo. I darkened the sky and lower right hand quarter, and eventually used both Dodge (set to "highlights") and Burn (set to "shadows") on the poplars to increase their contrast. I'm pleased with the print, but the JPEG looks less good.

^ Taken the day before I ran a course in Brecon when I was checking out a location (Craig Cerrig-gleisiad, about five mile south of Brecon). It had just started to rain.

I lightened the grass in the mid foreground, darkened the bracken, and spent hours poncing up the sky.

^ Rain approaching coast at St Ishmaels, near Carmarthen. Good place for rain pictures, Wales.

With my compliments; it's a really effective B & W picture! - jha

01 Jan 2009 10:04:49 JohnAshford:

The grey ground is hex d2d2d2 if anyone else wants to do the same tweak.

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07 Jan 2009 23:14:01 JackRuss:

Real nice set there Rod. As you may well know I am not "in to " Mono stuff maybe I should give it a go ?

The "St Ishmaels" does the most for me out of the set.

post some more get me more interested you never know?

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19 Jan 2009 10:06:04 PaulFranklin:

Rod - I particularly like nos 1 and 3

Paul

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-- RodBird - 31 Dec 2008