Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Sepia geometrics

Following Jean's post with sepia, and Marja-Leena's, I was wondering what I could do with it; winter trees were of course a temptation, but Jean had done those so beautifully, and Marja-Leena had done lovely etchy twiggy plant forms. I suppose the danger of it is it can look a bit mannered and pastichey in modern photography; I could have made some pictures of Moncontour, all ramparts and rooftops that would have looked so like Victorian postcards that I would have deserved to be shot for them. A friend ( Princeling's dad in fact ) does lovely portraits often using sepia, which look really alive and fresh but just a bit softened.
Anyway, then I saw these rather interesting geometrics on an old workshop, which really needed a monochrome, and the rusty, woody, mossy earth colours suggested sepia. Black and white would have been too harsh. I used Picasa's sepia effect, but turned the colour temperature up an notch - perhaps unneccesary - and tweeked the contrast shadows quite a bit too.



8 comments:

Jean said...

These are great - you're absolutely right about the appropriateness of sepia. And they display particularly well on your background colour, I think.

vicki johnson said...

i know it's cost is prohibitive, but you would love having Photoshop in your tool box.

Lucy said...

Thanks Jean, I suppose the background does look a little like Victorian notebook paper!
Zephyr - I do have Photoshop, but it's all in French, which combined with little notion about finding my way around it anyway, makes me a bit lazy about using it, except for very basic things like shrinking for uploading. I should start to play around with it again, but the Picasa is good for really quick cropping, straightening, sharpening, contrast, luminosity etc, though actually not really quite as good as photoshop on the last too, just quicker!

jzr said...

These are really lovely, Lucy! I love the textural quality and want to run my fingers over them. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

I love these, Lucy! and thanks for the link!

Zhoen said...

I have always had a soft spot for sepia.

julie said...

Lovely - sepia clearly doesn't get used enough these days :)

meggie said...

Wonderful effects on the varying textures & shadows.