Quotes
“…aesthetic harmony means very little unless the photography reveals a personal, emotional truth. I want a viewer to feel like they’re inside the experience rather than looking at it.” — Curran Hatleberg
“Originality lies in the embrace of one’s own voice, not in the reaction to others’ voices.” — Peter Kayafas
“I create situations that do not exist. I seek the truth from fiction.” — Sarah Moon
Links
Photoessays/bodies of Work
– “House Music” Reminiscent to me of Sally Mann, only indoors.
– WOW! Repeating patterns
Post-processing
– All of the capbilities of “Export As” More than you might realize
– Creating reflections and reflections in puddles
– Create realistic shadows
Field/Studio
– Why you should do projects
– Composing wide angle landscape shots
– Charlie Waite: Great images with small cameras
Miscellany
– Joe Pugliese: Interesting interview and images
– On Photoshop’s 30th birthday (Feb. 19), some stories of its birth

I spent a bit of time this weekend experimenting with different BW processing methods. This was my “traditional” method using a BW adjustment layer in PS and adding tonal contrast and detail extractor in COLOR Efex Pro.

For this image I converted to BW with a gradient map and then added a black layer and white layer and locally masked the layers to get deep blacks in particular.

Finally on this image I used Image > Calculations, with levels, curves and some added noise. Would like to hear comments and what you liked best.
i am an enthusiast of manipulating light with a black layer.
it allows one to emphasize one’s subject and get rid of non essential element
i also think that photography is to a great extend ‘painting with light’
the hard task is to make it natural to the viewer
Thanks, Ran. This is the first time I used a black layer in that way. I think it can have a lot of potential, but will take practice.