My B&W Weekend - Part 4

[Mike Buckley]

Frostburg, Maryland is a small college town that is the home of Percy Cemetery, which is really old by U.S. standards. Some of the gravestones indicate that people buried there were born in the late 18th century as in the last photo. Some of the people buried there emigrated from Scotland as in the second photo. The first photo displays a marker for the Percy family, presumably the family for which the cemetery was named.


Photo 1



Photo 2



Photo 3



Photo 4



Photo 5

[Digital]

Mike, nice images.


Bruce

[Kaye Leggett]

Mike these are wonderful, the B&W really allows the words to shine through - I particularly love the accuracy of the age of the deceased. I wonder if the Percy family are/were in any way related to our present day Percy family - more 'cmmonly' known as the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland and owners of Alnwick Castle, lately of Harry Potter fame.

[Mike Buckley]

Thanks to Bruce and Kaye.

Kaye mentioned that the text on the gravestones works well in B&W. I use a couple post-processing techniques to enhance the text: I select the pertinent area of the gravestone and increase the contrast. If I'm using my primary software, I then apply High Pass sharpening. Otherwise, I use Silver Efex Pro to apply increased "structure" and sometimes "micro structure" (or is it called "fine structure?").

[Manfred M]

Mike - monochrome certainly works well for these types of "subjects". I particularly like the first one as the trees really frame the monument quite nicely.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[FootLoose]

I like the 4th and 5th, Mike. The 4th because the bg light in the trees reminds me of fog creeping through headstones in horror movies. The 5th for the tones and stains on the stone.

[Mike Buckley]

Continued thanks to everyone.

Greg, thanks for mentioning the fourth one. That one is lit so differently than the others that it doesn't fit very well within the set in terms of presentation value. Even so, I decided at the last minute to include it because I like it for the reason that you mention.