Steel Mill

Bethlehem, PA
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The monochrome image is powerful and so evocative of the steel industry's demise in the U.S. Wonderful photo Daniel!

Thank you for your comment, Martin. I will try converting a couple of other shots I took to black and white.

I personally like this sort of subject, and I think the first shot has a lot of potential. However, it hides most of the interesting detail because almost all of the photo is very dark, in the bottom 1/4 of the histogram. If it were mine, I would spend time trying different tonal adjustments to bring out the detail and impose whatever contrast you want. There are countless ways one can do this, but here is a quick and dirty just to show how much interesting detail could be brought out. I don't know that this quick one is close to what I would choose in the end, but it illustrates the point.

https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-.../i-CZm3BdL.jpg

Hello Dan, True about the lost detail. I might try to bring some out while maintaining its dark appearance. Maybe some subtle changes. I will have to spend some time with it. Thanks for the edit and suggestions.

+1 to Dan's edit / comments. These are images that I really like; I do have a soft spot for industrial photography.

If these were my shots, I suspect I would spend hours dodging and burning to make local exposure adjustments.

Just some thoughts on colour vs B&W, as both genres are appropriate for this subject. If you want the image to be primarily about the shapes and structure, B&W works well. If you want to bring in a little more about the aging / deterioration colour is a good choice as the impact of the weathering and oxidation (rust) adds something to the story as well.

I entirely agree with Manfred. I certainly didn't consider my verion a completed image. I just wanted to illustrate that there is a lot of interesting detail lost in the original. I too would spend a lot of time dodging and burning, after deciding which areas and contrasts I wanted to emphasize.

Re color versions: in this as well, I agree with Manfred. Normally, I don't allow myself to substantially exaggerate color and texture, but I do in this sort of image when I want to focus on paint, rust, and the like.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Manfred M

If you want to bring in a little more about the ageing / deterioration colour is a good choice as the impact of the weathering and oxidation (rust) adds something to the story as well.

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I like the mono but prefer the colour images for Manfred's reason - colour tells more of the story here.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DanK

I don't allow myself to substantially exaggerate color and texture, but I do in this sort of image when I want to focus on paint, rust, and the like.

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And yes, a bit of exaggeration would also be good in the colour images!

Philip

PS: a very useful tool for this sort of image is local adjustment of midtone contrast. In case you aren'f familiar with this, if you use Lightroom, you can just brush over the areas where you want to increase contrast and use the contrast slider. A much more flexible way (IMHO, anyway) is to create a curves layer in Photoshop (or any other software that allows this), use the curve to increase contrast as much as you want in those areas, invert the mask to make it black, and paint white (opacity 100%, flow aorund 10%) to add the contrast to the areas where you want it.