Springfield Chair - The Back Story

 I recently posted the following photo to a group of which I am a member on Facebook. One of the comments was interested in the back story of the photo. I usually don't say that much about the photos I post, but this got me thinking it would make a good blog entry. I am WAY overdo on one anyway! Soooooooo....about the photograph itself.

© David Toczko

This is one of my favorite photographs. I was in Springfield, Kentucky covering the unveiling of a statue of Abraham Lincoln. It was an all-day event with bands and speeches....you get the idea. I took the opportunity of a break in the action to stroll down Main Street. Springfield is a quiet, friendly small town with a great downtown revitalization effort going on. As I walked and window shopped, I came upon an empty store front with this chair outside. For some reason, it immediately grabbed my attention. I loved the texture of the brick, the faded chair, the worn fabric, the iron work on the front door. As I stood there, I wondered how many folks had sat in that chair and who was the last person. What did the store sell and why did it close? What is a chair doing there anyway? Right then I had the final image in my mind, but it didn't come out of the camera this way. This is one of the photos I allowed myself to indulge in some artistic post-production work.

© David Toczko

 Here is the original image after processing the raw file in DxO Optics. The first thing you notice is that the original is a color photograph. I always shoot AND process in color rather than using the black and white option on the camera or creating a black and white when processing the RAW image. I do this for two reasons. The first is artistic. I think color images make better black and whites once converted than an original black and white. I think the saturation of the colors makes for stronger contrasts and shadows. And I have better control over the final outcome. The second reason is practical. You can always make a black and white from a color image...but not the other way around. Who knows what else I may want to do with the image....perhaps a HDR version....so start with color and go from there. I will say that I have been known to make virtual copies of images when processing the RAW images and apply black and white Film Pack effects to the copies whilst in DxO, but the original is always color. DxO has it's own set of great black and white film emulations, but I had a special look in mind.

                                                                                                          

© David Toczko

Now for the fun...ahem...artistic part! I fired up Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro, an absolutely amazing piece of software for black and white conversion in my opinion. I scrolled through the baseline presets to get a general idea what may be possible.I found something close to what I had envisioned when I took the photo and then began to tweak the settings. I was able to select from a wide variety of film emulations and adjust to my liking even farther.                               

                                                                                                      

Nice....but I want more. A little more grunge, a little more wear and tear. So back to Silver Efex. I applied another layer on top of what I had already done using a preset called "Wet Rocks". That gave me the look I was going for. I could have stopped here....and did for a while....but then the artistic devil on my shoulder said "Hey, wouldn't this look great in a sepia tone?"      

    

© David Toczko

Temptation got the better of me and off to Nik's Color Efex Pro I went in search of just the right sepia tone. With a host of options, it was easy to find just the right look I was going for. The quick preview feature Nik's software has along with a side-by-side before and after made the selection of the "Paper Toner" preset painless. A few tweaks to the preset for my personal taste and I was done. Again, the finished image that was featured at the top of the article is shown below.

© David Toczko

All images and text are copyrighted ©2011 David Toczko