Variations on variations on a theme: Marie Laveau.

Colin has already posted some images of the resting place of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans.  In this case, my take on the subject was more of a wide view, whereas he had chosen to go with closer framing.

Now, let's take a moment and talk about the unacknowledged participant in the process:  Photoshop.  I believe that Colin uses other pieces of software, but that's where I do my editing and cropping and so on.

Although I've done lots of image composition and special effects and retouching and so on with Photoshop, when it comes to my own photography I tend to use it pretty much the way I was taught to use a darkroom - I brighten, I darken, dodge and burn* selectively, change contrast and saturation, and that's about it. 

 I also make a decision about colour versus grey scale.  (It's interesting that black and white has survived the end of film as an artistic decision that one makes in a piece of software rather than a choice of film types - although, that being said, I think both Colin and I often plan for that choice when shooting the original images.)

One of the features of Photoshop that I almost NEVER use are the special effects filters:  Brush Strokes and Graphic Pen and Plastic Wrap and so on.  However, just for fun, I did the above image with a 50% overlay of Find Edges, which brought an additional level of grunge to the look of the monument - but, frankly,makes me feels like I'm trying too hard to find something that I didn't get in the original image.

 - Sid

 

* I recently had to explain to someone what dodging and burning was in terms of the icons for those tools in Photoshop, which shows a curled hand for burning, and a circular piece of material on a wire for dodging, which is how those actions were traditionally done in the darkroom.