This may be debatable in relation to photography, but in my personal case it is true though.
Considering the – from my personal perspective – rather disappointing result earlier this week (see my article here) I tried to visualize my photographic ideas once again. Never give up! My intention was to make two or three photographs with rich deep blacks (lows) and bright highlights (highs) – some kind of high contrast black & whites, monochromes or at least with very low color saturation.
I started my photo project in Baden near the Landvogteischloss (historical museum, the website is in German) and the old wooden bridge over the Limmat river. When photographing the old and massive castle I metered the light of the two brightest points of the composition (i.e. the strong reflections of the afternoon sun in the windows) and overexposed by additional 1.5 stops to keep the highest details still on Zone VIII (8) or IX (9). In post later on I would take care to keep the fine details in the shadows as well. Finally the overall result should look scary and dark – this was my intention.
When I took the image of the Landvogteischloss the two windows reminded me of the eyes of the creepy creature of the ‘Lullaby of Woe’ (YouTube video of Ashley Serena), see the lyrics below.
(c) Copyright Ashley Serena, YouTube, do not read the lyrics before going to bed.
Only a few meters in distance there was an interesting view to the Hochbrücke (translated ‘high bridge’) – a real high contrast scene again. Editing the files I was deeply impressed by the high dynamic range capability of my RICOH GR II – I even had to increase contrast and correct the tonal curve accordingly to match my visual imagination – I wanted to achieve as dark lows under the bridge and as bright highs on the water as possible, without loosing too many details in both.
The silhouette of Baden from the riverside at 4 p.m. was another high contrast composition. I had to bring down the shadows on the houses a little bit to emphasize the high contrast silhouette, again, my RICOH GR II had too much of dynamic range… A small mask on the sun in post made the bright light even softer and the blue hue of the sky was desaturated.
Here are all the three images again as a gallery.
In my bag was my much beloved RICOH GR II (as previously said) and nothing else, very lightweight and a real pleasure to work with. No bulky or heavyweight bag, no interchangeable lenses, no filters (even no ND filter, it’s built-in!), no tripod, perfectly minimal and weighting in total only 470 grams (the RICOH GR II including my thinkTANK minimal photo bag!). My style.
Below I experimented with rather wide frames – I’d like to show them here in full size. Please let me know in the comments, if you prefer the framed or the plain images, or if another color or width of the frame would have been better for you. I am very curious – thank you!
As a summary – today I was really happy with the results, without any doubts, and a little proud of myself not giving up and trying again and again. Earlier this week I was down low – today I feel perfect again up in the high.
There are no highs without lows.
And remember: Always wear a camera.
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