Drama at Penmon

Had a rather optimistic trip down to Penmon Point on Anglesey today to try and catch another sunrise shot of the lighthouse, as expected the lighting wasn't great & cloud was pretty heavy...I was in luck though as the cloud broke for a few seconds to provide a different opportunity

All C&C appreciated

Simon

[IMG]http://www.landscapephotographyuk.com/images/Snowdonia_view_from_penmon_point.jpg[/IMG]

Wow, that's an amazing shot Simon, those sunbeams are something else. Top marks from me.

It's a great spot and you've been foryunate to catch some interesting light. It always rains when we go there...

Thanks for the comments, this bit of luck made up for the lack of a decent Lighthouse shot anyway...good job I turned around & noticed it !!

simon

After some feedback on another forum I've revisited this one and converted to B&W, prefer it now as the slight colour in the original isn't really enough to add much to the shot

[IMG]http://www1.clikpic.com/skitchin/images/Snowdonia_view_from_penmon_point2.jpg[/IMG]

Not sure. to me the foreground is more dramatic/detailed in colour

I also prefer the colour. How about more saturation ?

The colour shots much better... nice beams of warm red light breaking through and illuminating the mountains. Strange dischord though between that and the blue sea? Can't decide if that's good or bad? If the sun had been hitting the sea that would have probably been tinted orange as well. In B&W it's just white rays and a nice picture of two houses.

Personally I don't know why people bother with B&W on computers,at the best they are about a million miles away from Ansel Adams?

shim

Colour for me too - it's the petrol blue shades in the clouds that make me warm to the first version, the monotone one's a bit drab for my taste.

Bet your glad you took your camera with you would have been ticked off to say the least if you had missed that shot lovely photo well done.
Ian

Thanks again for the feedback....opinion seems to be more towards the colour version than the B&W (on another forum too)

simon

Check out: here and here.

The pictures speak for themselves.

Cheers, Kris.

I prefer the colour image on this occasion, however have to agree with Kris mono can speak for itself on times.

Very nice Chris.... there will always be exceptions... very little colour in the fog anyway and it would have looked OK in colour. Same with the rocks, the colour version was probably just as good, I've seen similar in colour from the likes of Joe Cornish. Don't get me wrong I'm a massive B&W fan from the era of B&W film and have loads of books with nothing but B&W in them. It's just that I don't like the way people use plugins for plugins sake. Someone showed me some B&W photos they'd converted in PS and they even had a plugin that produced dust specs and scratches off the negatives on the jpegs. Even if they had been prints made from negatives you would have binned them and made another set after first thoroughly cleaning the negatives. It's the same with music CD's they have some software that produces cracks, scratches and pops like you used to get off worn vinyl so they use it and it sounds bloody awful. i.e. some Christina Aguilera tracks.

Some nice artistic tools here.... the befores look better than the afters and these are probably at the better end of the market. Bit like that software that you make collages greeting cards etc.

There will also always be photographers who can't work in colour, I'm particularly thinking of Faye Goodwin who about 25 years ago was one of the best B&W landscape photographers in the UK. I don't know if she ever got the hang of it, but her first colour photos were absolutely dreadfull. But 25 years ago landscape photography was 80% B&W and we all loved it and still do.

Some B&W looks better converted to colour like these Russian photos from a CENTURY ago. i.e. Before colour photography had been (properly) invented. Somehow I don't think that if someone took some 100 year old COLOUR photos and converted them to B&W that it would be quite as earth shaking as these images are. Click the images to see larger size.

Simon not getting at you here this type of shot could very well
work in colour and B&W. You didn't do it just because there was
a button that said "Convert to B&W" ..... Have you tried it as an oil painting

shim

No problem... I did a very simple conversion in ACR, just tweaked the colour channels & then added some contrast using dodge & burn tools. Only plug-in I have is Photokit Sharpener which I personally think does a brilliant job.

The reason I looked at B&W here was that the colours aren't really very strong and adding more saturation etc just made it look false, I quite like the B&W, even it isn't Ansel Adams...which being quite honest from my viewpoint isn't always neccesarily a bad thing