Friendly Friday edits

• Manja Maksimovič

When I first saw Amanda’s Friendly Friday prompt, I was thinking: I have nothing to post! And yet here is a record-breaker of a post with 34 photos.

You see, I rebel against the ever-growing truth that photos are no longer taken but rather made.

I never use Photoshop or a similar tool. The only editing I do (with Windows Photo Gallery) is cropping and bringing shadows into the light. Oh, and I straighten, that’s useful. And sometimes I must go easy on warm colours because golden light here doesn’t care and just glows, which is how I love it.

With all this in mind I didn’t quite know what to do, but then I remembered that I used to play more with converting my photos into black and white.

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I have a bit of a problem with (my) black and white photography. It’s not that I simply love colours too much. Obviously this is something for which lots of photography knowledge is required. It just won’t do to turn any photo into black and white and hope for the best.

This is how it was when I started.

Below are some examples from my first blog (which ran from 2014 to 2016). I won’t pretend that I know enough now to separate them into successes and failures. You can do that by yourselves (if you are able). You can also tell me about it, it would be interesting.

In every line there is a pair with the photo as taken and the exact same photo converted into black and white (or the other way around). Some conversions are cool, some exaggerated, some unnecessary. Let’s just say there are reasons why I rarely do it any more.

  • Ominous bird.
  • Cheerful bird.
  • Droplets.
  • Other worlds.
  • La Luna, Giardino dei tarocchi.
  • Niki de Saint Phalle designed it in colour for a reason.
  • Just a tree.
  • What a tree! (I couldn’t believe this was the same photo as before.)
  • A surreal tree.
  • I once knew the name of this tree but forgot.
  • Three pines in our mini park.
  • Guardian shadow heroes.
  • Siena scene, after.
  • Before. Better.
  • Tuscania fountain.
  • In a way you see more this way, but also less.
  • Between Portorož and Piran, overedited.
  • December 31 2015. The last stroll of the year.
  • Piran, temporary statues.
  • She-he. By Jakov Brdar.
  • Piran sunset.
  • I’m not sure which one I prefer.
  • Also in Piran.
  • Bestia has a good b&w potential.
  • Isola del Giglio. Where Costa Concordia toppled.
  • Much more cheerful.
  • Sacro Bosco, Bomarzo.
  • Not called the Park of Monsters for nothing.

And finally, here are six black and white photos posted on my first blog that I still quite like, but I can’t find their colour counterparts. They were either shot in black and white originally – plus red one time (I never do this, was just playing around) – or I managed to lose the originals since back then I wasn’t so careful to save them before any conversion as I am now.

Now I know that I never know when I’ll hate the edit, wishing to give a photo another life.

  • The Italian job.
  • An Etruscan bridge at Vulci.
  • Piran arch and door.
  • Timelessness. (One of the first photos taken with my then new camera. January 2015.)
  • Waiting for the seventh wave.
  • Das Ist Walter, Ljubljana.

For Friendly Friday Photo Challenge hosted by Amanda from Something to Ponder About: Photo edits

27 thoughts on “Friendly Friday edits”

      1. I am back to Buenos Aires but tomorrow we are flying to Ushuaia, in the very South of Argentina 😍 we are making every day something different, it is different also for me to keep track of everything 😂💪

        Liked by 1 person

  4. Those trees!!! What you did with them in black and white, is amazing. I felt like I was lying on the ground, in Slovenia, looking up. The surreal tree was something that would suit a large wall canvas.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you so much, Joanne. 🙂 I suppose it’s easy when you make a compilation and you can choose only the best ones. 😀 I once heard that a photographer is as good as the selection of the photos s/he shows (heavily paraphrased).

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  9. I still remember seeing my dad developing film on his makeshift lab on our bathroom. He already did a lot of “post-processing” those days, from playing around with chemicals to stuff like “dodge and burn” (exposing some areas of the film more than others, to highlight or hide a part of the image). For him, those hours locked in a dark bathroom were as much fun as taking the pictures.

    When I took up photography, it seemed only natural to follow the same footsteps (fortunately, digital had already replaced film, so I got to ditch the dark bathroom for a comfy chair in front of a computer). I have a lot of fun looking at a picture, imagining how I want it to look, and then trying to get there.

    Like you, I also like colour more than B&W, but I think some photos are just meant to be colorless. For instance, the B&W versions of the first two immediately draw the eye to the most striking elements on the photo (the power lines and the water droplets).

    Perhaps there’s room for all kinds of edits. Except selective colours like the last one, those should die a slow and painful death 🙂

    – Verne

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thanks, Verne, I appreciate your input. It sounds lovely, the process as you go through it. Whereas when I see a photo, it’s all about how it makes me feel as it is.

      Serves me right for including the only selective colour photo I’ve ever taken. 😀 What was I thinking?

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