Tag Archives: Williamsburg

Images, Reviews

Window to Your Soul

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Historical building in Colonial Williamsburg, VA. Nikon D800e; monochrome conversion with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.
Historical building in Colonial Williamsburg, VA. Nikon D800e; monochrome conversion with Nik Silver Efex Pro 2.

Here’s another image from my recent trip to Colonial Williamsburg. On our first morning at the historical area, this house immediately caught the attention of our group. We probably spent 15-20 minutes photographing it. Because there were 12 of us there, wide shots weren’t feasible. Instead, I switched to my 70-200mm AFS G VRII Nikkor and went looking for tighter compositions.

I really loved the textures and shadows in this image, and while the color photo was nice, I really wanted the shadows and textures to be the dominant elements. I therefore chose to convert the image to monochrome. To do this, I used Silver Efex Pro 2, part of the Nik Collection (now part of Google).

Why Silver Efex Pro 2 is My Choice for Monochrome

There are lots of options for converting your images to monochrome, including on-board conversion in your RAW converter. While you can get reasonable results using those tools, a dedicated monochrome tool like Silver Efex Pro 2 offers some seriously better control options. Continue reading Window to Your Soul →

Images

Photo of the Day: Capturing the Sun

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This old tree in Colonial Williamsburg captured my attention.
This old tree in Colonial Williamsburg captured my attention.

I loved this old tree in Colonial Williamsburg. The problem was that the morning sun was in my face. Had I shot this tree from the other side, I would have had a distracting background. Therefore, I decided to shoot it as an HDR. I used a 7-shot (±3EV) bracket on the Nikon D800e, and I stopped down to f/16 to create the starburst pattern in the sun. I tone-mapped the image in HDR Efex Pro 2 and then finished it off in Photoshop with Color Efex Pro 4 and some minor layer tweaks.

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