B&W Challenge No. 33 - An Ornament

[alexr]

Thank you for all of the great entries to Challenge 32. Sorry that I haven't been around much to contribute myself. For slightly unfathomable reasons I find I have only actually got my camera out of its bag twice in 2020 so far, and then for the last few weeks I have been up to my eyeballs; even periods of working from home haven't given much respite. But that is all just excuses, and hobbies such as ours should be the things that are keeping us sane through all of this.
So, this month we need a theme that we can all do from the comfort of our homes, hence my topic is 'An Ornament'. The challenge is to use monochrome to show it at its best, so think of clever use of shadows and textures. It might be interesting to see what you concentrate on once you remove colour from a highly coloured object. But an extra challenge is that I would also like the ornament to be shown on its own. You can of course achieve this in many different ways, through positioning, through depth of field, by extracting in post processing or by lighting, but bottom line is: just one object showing in the image please.
As usual, please share your processing method, and equally share with us the efforts that didn't work as well as those that did. I will try to pop back in and comment and contribute when I can but please don't be offended if I don't.
But most of all, keep safe and look after those around you. All the very best. 

[hmca]

No apologies needed, alexr. We all appreciate your contributions to to this website.....not only in the B/W Challenge but as an IOW judge as well. You have given us a challenging theme. It will be fun to see what people choose to photograph and how they present their image.

[pontiac1940]

Thank you alexr As Helen noted, there is no need to apologize and thanks for this interesting challenge.  

I photographed these two ornaments using the studio lights I purchased in December to do a small shoot for a bronze artist.   

The brass and stainless canon was handmade by our son in college when he was studying drafting. It is about 22 cm long. The cat (leopard?) is about 10 cm end to end ... age unknown but believed to be quite old, i.e. 1800s.   

The ornaments were set on the black backdrop and table-top cloth under which I placed a small cereal bowl to provide slight elevation of the ornaments. The raw images were processed in ACR where the levels were adjusted and  the images desaturated. There were some slight gray areas in the cloth around the objects which I cloned away and also painted over with a soft black brush. For good measure, the images were changed to B&W using new adj layer >> gradient map with the foreground set to black and the background to white. Minor mid-tone adjustments were made. The cat face was lightened a tad by dodging.  

[hmca]

Really nice, Clive! Like your lighting.

[pontiac1940]

Got to thinking (a rare occasion on my part). The first two photos posted were using studio lights ... albeit $200 studio lights...and most people do not have lights. So I took another photo of the brass canon using nothing other than the dark backdrop cloth and shot under LOW natural room light (in the basement) using a tripod and slow shutter speed. Again, I painted over some of the grayish cloth to blacken it. The photo is not great, but the point is many subjects can be photographed with bare essentials. In this case, a tripod was the most important. (Also used the tripod with the lights.) 
   

[blackmutt]

Nice, Clive. I went towards nature elements. The first is an antler found on a walk, I tried to show the smooth and rough. The second is a bird nest that fell out of a tree. Processed only in Lightroom - sharpened both, brightened the whites, raised the clarity and also converted to black & white. These were taken in my elaborate basement studio, table and a couple of white foam core boards under florescent lights.  I can see a bright white spot at the end of the antler that could be fixed, oh well.
i.ibb.co/smJ5qQw/DSC-8107.jpg

i.ibb.co/WcMphwt/DSC-8106.jpg

[pontiac1940]

Apr 5, 2020 19:30:22 GMT blackmutt said:

These were taken in my elaborate basement studio, table and a couple of white foam core boards under florescent lights.

Nice use of simple techniques. It is amazing how simple it is to make a studio using materials on hand or perhaps from the local hardware store. And since we have control over WB, there is no need to fret about fluorescents ... and LEDs lights can almost match daylight. About ten years ago I did a very profitable photo shoot using not much more than you described.

Nice antlers. Love the nest.   

[blackmutt]

Thank you! Yes it so true that you don’t need elaborate equipment. I have no lighting just a good tripod. A few other goodies and I usually forget to use them. Yes the antler is a lucky find and I counted 13 nests in my collection. I have only kept ones that have fallen into the yard.

[billz]

My ornament is a 1 ft. tall, tacky souvenir Empire State Building. There was very little conversion to B&W needed as it's basically a grey item shot against a black backdrop (quite artistically held by my lovely and talented bride.) There was a touch of blue in the window light which I removed in Camera RAW. Contrast was added in Photoshop with a 'multiply' layer and a 'screen' layer, both sparingly masked.



Stay well everyone, and stay inside when you can.

[hmca]

My ornament is an actual Christmas tree ornament. In my mind I wanted to create a high key image that would bring out the beauty of the glass. As I got ready to shoot I seemed to remember reading that glass is not easy to photograph. I googled technique suggestions....light boxes, off camera flashes etc. were suggested. Having none of those I decided to go with whatever I could get using window light. I took a number of pictures and in the end was pretty pleased with this one. I am including the original colored version plus the final version.

Editing:
1. Used a high key filter in Color Efex.
2. Created two black and white versions in SE 2: An overexposed version and a high key version. I layered the overexposed version above the high key version (which was darker) and brought back a little more contrast to the knob at the top of the ornament.
3. Used a soft brush to paint over the background on the right for a more uniform look.
4. Added a tad of sharpening using the hight pass filter.

Original:




High Key

[hmca]

Thanks for this theme, Alex. We are lucky to have a hobby that keeps us engaged in a positive way during these stressful times.

Here are two of the approximately 10 shots I took of this little box this morning trying to decide on the best way to present it.

For this one, wanted to use its reflection to add interest. It was processed in SE with a green filter added.
Using the high pass filter at the end helped to bring out the details.



For the second one, I tried to get in tight. It was processed in Camera Raw as a monochrome with a Kodak 3200 film preset.
I used the high pass filter to sharpen.



Looking at them both, I think the second one probably fits the assignment better.

[Peterj]

A very colorful dinner bell from my wife's collection. I used a light box to capture and processed using On1: adjusted tone, added dynamic contrast, increased vibrance a bit, and of course the B&W filter.

[hmca]

Noticing how nicely your bell's details stand out, Pete.

[Peterj]

Apr 18, 2020 0:47:50 GMT hmca said:

Noticing how nicely your bell's details stand out, Pete.

Thank You! The brass adorned with jewel colors made it pretty straight forward.

[Peterj]

Another dinner bell. On1 used for: tone, dynamic contrast, B&W with an iron blue toner