Perspectives

Revisiting 'old friends'

11/01/2014
I've realised that I haven't spent much time sorting out black and white images for the site, which is a real oversight on my part as I have always loved mono images. Now, there's a lot to be said for not looking backwards, but I have decided to revisit some of my old images and start reprocessing some of them.
I'm not a fan of sitting at a screen, and I'm less of a fan of looking back through my images, but the new features available in Lightroom mean that I'm prepared to put up with the 'pain' and start off by updating some black and white images. Tools like the Adjustment Brush and Gradient tool mean that it's much easier to process raw images as black and white almost completely in Lightroom (except for removing some of the more tricky dust spots), just like in the traditional darkroom. Using these local adjustments to dodge and burn areas of the image to get the tones and contrast right in the raw image means that you don't have to go near Photoshop.
You'll find a new black and white gallery to house these images, some may be familiar to you from the other galleries, although they may be colour versions. So despite the fact that I still believe that the best picture is going to be the next one I take, I've discovered that even sitting at the computer and trawling through several hard drives worth of images can have its own rewards.