* Wednesday C&C "No Theme" Thread #844 / Revived #064 on 2024 06 19 *

Your intervention makes it look like a newspaper print almost, and that is a good effect for this subject.
Minnie's was "subtler", and made the two boys look almost the same shade of grey.
Your version extends contrast to bring a bigger juxtaposition of dark and bright.
That is, of course, perfectly fitting for the subject.
After all, when it comes to civil rights (and the denial of them), black and white can (and should) be united.

Creating monochromes is obviously very subjective with a lot of flexibility for the final look.

Agree completely.
There is a huge range in atmospheres that can be created within monochrome.
As much as with colour.

Minnie's was fine, but your version is more in line with my usual preference. (I usually also go for higher contrast if I convert to B&W)

Roel & Danno - Thanks to both of you for your feedback on the processing. The high-contrast version is a good alternative, and I understand your preference for it. And I always appreciate anyone who takes the time to edit one of my photos to show me an alternative take.

I'll take a little trip down memory lane to explain my choices. I was attempting to emulate a photograph rather than a newspaper print. I grew up in Mississippi in the 60s in a newspaper family so I cut my photography teeth on news photography of that era. Those jail cells had very dim lighting, usually a single hanging bulb in the hall outside the cell block. The few windows were high, small and deeply recessed. The only way you'd get a photo at all was to sneak your camera in as a visitor, with the kind of film you'd use at a high school football game, and leave the flash off. The result would be murky, with poor focus and limited DOF. If anyone were brave enough to publish it, it would be halftoned via a rotograving machine before being affixed to a wood block and locked into the flatbed letterpress amid type that was set in hot metal on a linotype and headlines set hot in a Ludlow. By the time I was 13 I could do all of it except the linotype and the press.

Your ideas about increasing contrast have made me think of doing up a halftone in PS. That would produce a more contrasty but even less detailed version that looked something like a 1964 newspaper. By the early 70s, everyone was going offset, and the process and output changed. My most interesting photo collection is from our family's old Herald archives from the 60s. It's a window into life in small-town Mississippi during that very troubled era - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Having known Minnie for a while now, I was aware of her history.
I am glad she shared some of it here.
And I am impressed with her long history in (important) photography and journalism.
Makes me feel young (good) and a total amateur (hmmm...).

No problem and thank you for sharing your back story behind your image. I can certainly see now why you chose the final look you did and well done on that.

Just to clarify, I wasn't aiming particularly for a newspaper style look in the edited version I posted. That was Roel's original interpretation of the style of my edited version.

I too on a few occasions experiment with monochromes but as I mentioned in my original reply with my edited version my style for monochromes is to try to add "punch" and "pop" to appropriate extents for the image. Basically I generally try to use high contrast to highlight elements important to me in the scene.

Interesting discussion, thanks.

And yes, when I say what a style of image-processing looks like, I am not trying to guess at the internal intentions of the image maker/processor.
I am just expressing what impression it creates for ME.
All C&C is subjective. It should be.
Photography is art, not mathematics.

Thanks Mike. Glad you liked the images :-)
I finally got a chance to respond to this week's thread.
The F stops I used for the first 3 shots with the viltrox lens are shown below the images in my original post, it was F7.1 for two of them and F8 for the other. I'll have to get used to opening it up more. It is a very wide angle lens so, of course, even with the lens wide open the DOF is already large and it is quite sharp. As you mentioned, often in such images I want foreground objects to be in focus too, but even so, I should venture toward a bit wider aperture with this lens :-) By theway, it is well built and resonably compact.

It's interesting the see such scenes. Not really a clean and pleasent place, it's all broken down and doesn't look like it will be renovated any time soon. But your shot has picked out some colourful elements in these back streets

A cool view with an apt title! +Interesting & well processed too!

very pretty and colourful bird, well captured

Inspired by your shots I did some follow up on the lens. Reviewers are impressed with the corners, even wide open or with just a little stopping down so you are probably right in thinking this lens can be opened up more. When you get around to it (now there's an excuse for another trip) I'll be most interested in the results.

Well spotted and executed. The lines ,texture and colours all working together. The DOF is just right so that the slightly blurry lines on the leaves at the lower edge quickly draw you in to the middle "focus" point, where everthing is nice and sharp!

Pretty flower, the little drops of water help too. Your slightly brighter version is even better.

Thois is cool!!
Lots of speed and power visible here; with the horse almost flying. I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that spear !!

Interesting and poignant image. The jail at the Parchman farm has lots to tell about injustice.

I am glad that you picked up on the colour aspect of the image.
The title was a clear hint to look exactly there.

Did you see that a duo of blue and red gets repeated three times in the image?
Mind you, this was something that I actually did not notice while shooting (unless instinctively and subconsciously), but only afterward (and in fact just recently while looking for a image to post)...

There is (biggest colour patches) sky and building (with no extra manipulation on the colour of that sky - that is just Olympus blue).
There are the two splashes of colour in the still life against the left hand side wall.
And there are the colours in the bending man within the natural frame.

These repetitions of colour bring a kind of subconscious harmony to what otherwise would be chaos.
(At least, that is what I think myself of this image, in retrospect and with hindsight.)

+1