Coho View
This is not what I was planning for this image. But when I opened the software, I was resented with something like this because of the last used setting. A few adjustments and this is where I ended up, and I quite like it.
It is the view from the ferry, part of my Coho series, taken on the way to Port Angeles and the Olympic Peninsula in July.
The edits on the top photo were made using Topaz B&W Effects software, cropped first in Lightroom and then modified from the Six Tone Poster with Colour preset, then adjusted further back in Lightroom. The image below uses the same Topaz preset, but with no further modifications in Topaz or LR.
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Canon 5Dii, Canon 100/f2.8 macro lens, ISO100, f2.8, 1/6400th for both shots
burnt embers 
Posterizations produce some unexpected results. I always enjoy playing around with pre-sets and filters because you never quite know what will appear on screen, and I always learn something new during that exploratory journey. I think this worked out rather well. I prefer the first of the two.
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Hi Ken – I agree, the unexpected can jump out, and sometimes a useful method is discovered. In this case I like the first a lot better than the second. The second is included mostly as a reminder to myself that the pre-sets are a place to start, but rarely a place to end up. The first picture is quite heavily adjusted from the pre-set and benefits from the extra attention.
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Some of my earliest photographic experiments involved solarizations and it was not an easy process to master. As a matter of fact it was difficult, time consuming and wasteful, not to mention expensive (for the waste). Though I don’t do much of it now, I like to see others capture this one-of-a-kind look as a means of expression.
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Thanks Ken. A bit of experimenting is good for me. I must say that until recently I did not even recognise this look as a photographic technique – I was totally oblivious.
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I can see this as the cover of a John Le Carre novel about smuggling diamonds from Kuwait via Panama to enrich the a Russian cold war officer refugee captain whose criminal business has morphed into a fake cover trade or front in bananas. That sort of thing. Just change the sky to a sunset and presto!
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Hi Richard. I could change this to a sunset, probably. But really it is looking to the east at about 10 am – it must have been brighter in some colour for the treatment to work this way, but it was likely one of the blues.
I agree the shot does have a feel of some 60’s novel jacket, probably because this style of treatment was popular at some time like that; when I no longer remember. It does look familiar though. And rather cliché too in some ways.
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