B&W Architecture Shots: Howto?

[bedford]

Hi,

can anyone explain to me how this shots were taken & post-processed:

http://www.123inspiration.com/black-and-white-architecture-photography-by-joel-tjintjelaar/black-and-white-architecture-photography-joel-tjintjelaar-2/

I don't have a clue how to achieve this extreme contrast in architecture shots and especially this drawing-like appearance (feature-less white surfaces and hard-contrast edges). Is a long exposure necessary?

Hints & speculations welcome.

Regards,
Oliver

 

[MrFotoFool]

Based on the softness of the cloud, it does appear to be a long exposure. How long I am not sure. It is also possible (I am speculating here) that it was taken with an infrared modified camera. Infrared shots in black and white give very dark skies. Again I am not positive that it was infrared, but that is one way to get near black skies in black and white.

It is also clear the photographer is good at post processing (in addition to having a good eye). Black and white is much more difficult than the average (non photographer) realizes - definitely more difficult than color. To get dramatic tones like this without losing detail is tricky. The most popular software for black and white conversions is Nik Silver Efex 2, which may or may not have been used here.

 

[sanjosedave]

study the work of Julia Anna Gospodarou

she has a book out and there are some youtubes

 

[MrFotoFool]

study the work of Julia Anna Gospodarou

she has a book out and there are some youtubes

I just looked at her website and the images scrolling across the home page are very impressive. Thanks for the lead.

 

[sanfranchristo]

You might find some of this post processing tutorial to be of interest (it seems he "based" this on a work by the same photographer):

http://digital-photography-school.com/take-your-photos-from-blah-to-wow-with-lightroom-and-photoshop/

 

[bedford]

study the work of Julia Anna Gospodarou

she has a book out and there are some youtubes

Thanks for the link. Quite impressive and enlightening, but after reading it, it's not how I understand photography:
"Photography Drawing means processing a black and white image by using the principles of classical black and white drawing. In a word, applying Photography Drawing means processing your images as is you were drawing them." Too much work on the pixel level (similar to smudge painting?).

Regards,
Oliver

 

[Hector1970]

Hi Bedford,
Julia Anna Gospodarou and Joel Tjintelaar are very connected.
They produce videos and books together.
Joel Tjintelaar is on Youtube with an hour long session on something.
It's totally unfollowable.

Their book is quite beautiful and fairly interesting but while they describe how they do it unless you are already an Photoshop expert it's fairly unfollowable. There' s not enough detail.
This means you have to buy the video.
I find Joel Tjintelaar not very good at explaining what he does.
English is not his first language but he often rambles and doesn't explain properly.
I think he called it iGSM, Gradient Selective Masking.

This is a fancy name for Luminosity Masks for which there are many explanations out there.

What he's basically doing is long exposures.
Alot of the time he's replacing the sky with a long exposure sky.
He is they converting to black and white and going to great trouble to get smooth transitions between shades of grey.
He is brightening parts of the buildings (particularly edges) to emphasize shape.
If you consider the Zone system for BW (made famous by Ansel Adams) 10 is completely black and 1 is completely white, Joel is keeping between 2 and 9.

His and Julia's work is skillfully done.
It's their vision of a photograph as opposed to the straight image.
They tend to start out with very flat images , exposed to the right and then work from there.
You really need alot of Photoshop expertise to do what they do.

 

[quod]

A fairly simple technique for darkening blue skies is to modify the luminosity of the blue and aqua channels in Adobe Camera RAW and then convert the image to black and white. Basically, you darken the blue channels. I have done this in the past to create an infrared look (or a moon sky look). The challenge is smoothing the subtle blue gradients so that they have silky smooth tonal transitions.