Whirlpool, Brule River, MN - For C.J.

When I first started taking photographs about 3 years ago (yeah, I'm still pretty much a noobie compared to most of you!), I shot only 35mm black and white film. After about 6 months, I bought my first roll of fuji slide film and I've been following the color path ever since. While I think it's tough to "serve two masters" in a sense, black and white photography has had a strong impact on my color work, and serves as a foundation for how I perceive color images and print quality as a whole. Recently, I've been enjoying the photographs of some notable B&W photographers such as John Sexton and have also enjoyed viewing what Christopher Jordan has been experimenting with in black and white. I got inspired the other day to give a B&W conversion a shot, and this is what resulted. The original capture was recorded on 4x5 slide film (Provia 100f). It then was converted to black and white by copying the channels as layers and adjusting the opacities to get as globally close as I could to the right "mix". I then masked off portions of the individual color channel info to adjust the tones locally. Some dodging and burning was also done.

While I don't know that I'll ever do much B&W photography, it was fun to get my feet wet again. Thanks for looking!

Joel,

This is just about a PERFECT photograph. I just have one question. In the right there is a verticle line or white, that is not very prominent but never the less is there. I'd work on cloaning it out a bit.

Your composition and balance is terriffic. I have been playing around with B & W myself and not getting to the point I am happy with the resluts yet. It's not as easy as it seems. Kudos on a great image.

JG

This is really cool, it is almost like two separate images, when I first scrolled down I thought what an awesome image then the swirl appeared and "I thought what the hell is this" But after viewing it a few more times I really like it, I was really taken by the smooth look of the water as it moved down the creek and then BAM the swirl appears, the contrast between the two is pretty amazing. Very unique and well photographed image Joel.

Wow - for CJ no less! I think this one is really for Joel, cause it's excellent! I really like the range of tones and the whirlpool is great. I'm still looking for one of these to shoot sometime.

I really like this as is, and I also like it with the trees cropped out and just the stream and rocks. Nice one Joel! Now I'm inspired to go work on MY monochrome images some more.

CJ

Thanks guys.

Bernie - Thanks for the laugh, to funny!

I really, really like this photograph. Great work.

Excellent image, Joel. The swirl really makes it for me, and excellent conversion as well.

Thanks for sharing