February 17, 2012 · 5:54 am

Color Filtering in Black & White Revisited


While perusing photographs for Wednesday’s blog, I came across an interesting color shot that I had shown before—Lobster Traps.  A gigantic pile of yellow, blue, purple, red, and orange lobster traps.  What a great subject, I thought, to revisit my blogs on color filtering to obtain the best black and white conversions.  The first blog on the subject covered how to use color filters, either over the lens or internal digital filtering built into the camera, to obtain such effects.  That blog was titled Black & White Photography—It’s All in the Color.  The second blog was Black & White Filtering After the Picture is Taken (and with FREE Software!).

In that first blog I used a multicolored slinky-type toy to show the different effects of color filtering.  As I looked at those lobster traps, though, I thought to myself, “What a great outdoor subject to demonstrate the same effect.”  So, once again using my favorite free photo editing software package, Google’s Picasa, I filtered the image using the most popular landscape and portrait color filters to show the effects on contrasts following conversion from color to black and white.

Remember your effects—warmer colors (yellow through red) are generally used to enhance landscapes, and cooler colors (greens) help in the conversion of most skin tones.  The first shot in the sequence below is the original color with increased saturation to multiply the subsequent filtering effects.  The next photograph shows conversion to black & white without any filtering.  Following that the pictures are in this order of filtering:  Light Green, Light Yellow, Red, and Dark Green.  I deliberately put the Red and Dark Green examples next to each other, as their effects should be complete opposites and will show the most contrast.  Likewise, the Light Green example resides beside the Light Yellow conversion to show the subtlety of even small amounts of filtering at opposite ends of the color spectrum.

While you’re studying the effects on the lobster traps, don’t forget to look at the surrounding foliage and note how the warmer filters progressively darken the leaves while the cooler filters lighten them.  Indeed, the leaves should appear very dark under red filtering, and nearly white when filtered for green . . . and I’m making this prediction before I’ve even done the conversions.

Let’s see if my predictions are correct:

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February 15, 2012 · 6:06 am

Playing Around with Black & White


We’ve covered Black & White photography before:  When to Convert to Black & White—Landscapes  But B&W is fun, so I thought I’d go through my archives from our D.C.—Shenandoah—Outer Banks trip and play around with some photographs that looked to be likely candidates for conversion from color.  Here’s what I got for my trouble:

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February 13, 2012 · 7:01 am

An Endorsement from David Knox Whitmire . . . or is it Williams?


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A Classic Noir Book Review

That name not familiar?  Then you haven’t read The Globe yet, have you.  But, first, some background.

There are a lot of characters in The Globe.  It is, after all, a mystery.  And what would a mystery be without suspects? Lots of suspects?

One of those characters is David Knox Whitmire.  What makes this particular character unique is that I based much of Mr. Whitmire’s physical characteristics on my fest friend from college (and the best man at my wedding), Psychology Professor David Knox Williams.  I don’t as a rule base my characters on real people, but I wanted to reward David for all the help, encouragement, and hours of proofreading he’s done for me over the years.  So, I asked David if I could base a pivotal character on him, and he readily agreed with the caveat that I change the last name in honor of his late mother.  David then proceeded to practically write the character of David Knox Whitmire for me—contributing everything from the dastardly Mr. Whitmire’s educational background to his place of residence and even particulars on his rather shady business dealings.  Hey, that’s just the kind of help any author craves.

Anyway, David decided to do a video review of The Globe while in character.  He even dressed the part.  He then posted the review on his Facebook page and the Amazon Product Page for The Globe.

Oh, and, yes, David does indeed have acting experience, mostly with a local theater group in his hometown of Spartanburg.  And, no, David is not heterochromatic.  Like much of the fictional part of the character, that too was an invention of the real David’s imagination.

Good job on the review, Mr. David Knox Whitmire . . . or is it Williams?

Milestone alert:  I was just informed by my weblog service provider that this is the 200th post to my blog.

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Filed under Author, Books, eReaders, Humor, Writing