Saturday, August 21, 2010

August 21-Revisiting Ireland

I decided to sift through several hundred slides from a 1984 trip to Ireland, scan a few favorites, and edit them in Photoshop. What I have learned after a couple of hours of editing two images is that it would be better to plan a trip to Ireland and photograph anew. These were photographed with a Pentax ME Super that I purchased a few weeks before the trip. I had many challenges because, I learned when I returned to the U.S., the camera's light meter was off. Many images were under or overexposed. The quality is nowhere near what I can get with my current digital camera equipment. Still, there were some images I wanted to see if I could salvage.

I don't remember what town I photographed the Lynch's pub but it was the only time I saw a pub with my family name. I cleaned up the image in Photoshop with the clone and healing brush tools, then cut out the car and created a layer. Then I used channel mixer to create a monochrome background, adjusted the contrast and deepened the blacks. You can see how dusty and underexposed the original image was. I bought some film cleaner but need to pick up a lint-free cloth. Just like the old days in the darkroom when a bit of dust would add an hour to printing, digital is no different. If you don't start with a clean negative or slide, you will spend hours editing out dust and scratches.

This image is from a series I photographed at Jerpoint Abbey, a ruin of a Cistercian abbey in County Kilkenny built in 1158. I decided to posterize the image to minimize the sky and maximize the constrast in the rock walls.

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