While processing some hand-held, low-light shots that I’d taken of Hiscock House in Trinity, I decided to play around a little with colour.I’m still of two minds about digital manipulation of images; sometimes I like it and sometimes I feel it’s overdone. It’s so particularly a matter of personal taste that there really can be no right or wrong, just a feeling in my mind about what works and what doesn’t.

What initially attracted me to this shot were the combination of the clean lines and the sudden punch of colour at the end. Rendering it in black and white with that burst of colour  preserved shows more of what my mind’s eye was seeing than does the original, shot in straight colour. You can see the original below. I simply masked the parts I wanted to keep in colour, feathered the edge to blend things a bit better and then did a convert to black and white.

It was always black and white in my head anyway, except for the window, lamp and ambient glow.

These were taken with my Tokina 11-16mm lens at f2.8 with a shutter speed of  1/2.5 s. That is a *nice* lens. Between it an my Sigma 17-70 f2.8, I can do just about anything I need to in low-light situations.

When I see shots like this (or take them), I can relate profoundly to my grandmother, who spent a good deal of time drawing and painting Trinity. This shot feels rather like the inside of one of the dollhouses she made. When I look at this shot, I half-expect to be able to step back and lift the roof off….