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My World: The Black Country Museum

GarethKitchener

New member
The “Black Country” is the name given to a region of the West Midlands in England. During the Industrial Revolution the area became heavily industrialised, with coal mining, iron foundries, brickworks and steel mills. The name is believed to have come from from the soot from the heavy industries that covered the area.

The Black Country Museum was opened in 1978 and is an open-air museum of shops, houses and industrial buildings that have been relocated and rebuilt to form a village covering over 100,000 square metres, demonstrating the history of the area, with a focus on 1850 to 1950.

The following photographs were taken on our visit there in April 2018. All were taken with a Canon EOS 60D and processed in Lightroom, with the black and white conversion done using “Tonality” as a Lightroom plug-in.


Hardware by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr


Canalscape by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr


The School by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr


PetrolPumps by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr


The Mine by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The “Black Country” is the name given to a region of the West Midlands in England. During the Industrial Revolution the area became heavily industrialised, with coal mining, iron foundries, brickworks and steel mills. The name is believed to have come from from the soot from the heavy industries that covered the area.

The Black Country Museum was opened in 1978 and is an open-air museum of shops, houses and industrial buildings that have been relocated and rebuilt to form a village covering over 100,000 square metres, demonstrating the history of the area, with a focus on 1850 to 1950.

The following photographs were taken on our visit there in April 2018. All were taken with a Canon EOS 60D and processed in Lightroom, with the black and white conversion done using “Tonality” as a Lightroom plug-in.


Hardware by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr


Canalscape by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr


The School by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr


PetrolPumps by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr


The Mine by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr

These are indeed impressive! The village seems very real. I would also like to see faces with coal in the pores!

I am interested in learning more about the B&W conversion with the plugin, “Tonality”. It reminds of tonal remapping to develop HDR.

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Gareth,

I must look at this image on its own.

At first I thought this was inside a brick church because of the shape of the windows.






The School by Gareth Kitchener, on Flickr​




With this remarkable filter, there are no excesses in the B&W transformation. The wood is presented so well.

Obviously it would be difficult to have a class full of actor children!

Asher
 

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Gareth,

These images are just stunning, each in its own way. Perhaps my favorite is "Canalscape", yet in its regard I need to express my dislike for photos that have been so heavily processed that they look like ultra-realistic paintings. Sometimes I chide the creator of such an image by saying, "That almost looks like a photograph." And this one does.

But that small niggle does not decrease my admiration of these lovely works, which tell part of the story of an important region.

Best regards,

Doug
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Now, Gareth, this is very different. You have shifted the universe!

The “hyperreality” of your aggressive remapping of color to to tonality, allows us to enter a world of satire and allegory.




It now seems that the gas pumps are people and that opens up so many imaginative possibilities to the observer.

This makes a very successful picture!

Kudos,

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Well, Reginald,

Photographic documentation like this will be used in research decades from now and your work will be treasured. Not enough of what we go through in changes of society are recorded for posterity. So I believe your work is much more valuable than just the good photography that is so obvious.

Asher
 

holbrookged

New member
I've never really had a go at B&W. Is the best way to take them with your camera set to B&W or to convert colour imaegs as a post process?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I've never really had a go at B&W. Is the best way to take them with your camera set to B&W or to convert colour imaegs as a post process?
Some folk prefer a camera that has no color filter over its sensels and they control the emphasis on wavelengths of light by using colored filters which preferentially block some of certain colors.

This is how classically we worked with B&W photography.

The situation today is that with capabilities in post processing of digital images, we can much more judiciously remap hues to tones.

In classical B&W photography, colored patterns on a dress might come out as uniform Grey if the luminosity of different hues are identical to each other or the background.

Starting with either a jpg or RAW Files in full color, we can remaphues of the same brightness to different levels of grey.

By contrast, if one only has a pre-cooked monochrome file, that opportunity has already been lost.

Asher
 
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