Black and white.

Exercise: Black and white.

The byre I used for the subject of the exercise is one I have used before.  For this one, however, I didn't want any modern buildings intruding.  The byre is extremely run down and could come from any age, and it was that aspect of it I wanted to exploit.  In taking the colour version I used a polarising lens to darken the blue sky so as to lift out the clouds.  The structure of the byre and the rough ground lend themselves very well to a black and white interpretation.

The first task was to straighten and crop it.  By removing the foreground the byre seems to sink into the ground and looks even more desolate.  I left in the open space to the right to give an impression of isolation.  Next I used edge sharpening and unsharp mask to give it the feel of high acutance grain.  I converted it to monochrome and used the colour siders to darken the sky to the right and lighten it to the left.  The greens and yellows were lightened and the reds darkened.  All this increased the contrast without actually using any direct contrast controls.  I tried a lighter version of this image but it lost the feeling of failure and collapse.  The scene is now one of almost total desolation and could easily have been taken for the Farm Security Administration.