Well what the hell, it’s April Fools’ Day, what better time to post something out of the ordinary. Having read some recent blog posts about the need to experiment and push the bounds of one’s typical style, I was inspired to post some images that are a departure from my “normal” type of photography. So yesterday and last night, I shot some images here in Hoi An, Vietnam, and then today, with some free time on my hands while my tour guests explored Hoi An town by themselves, I did a bunch of “tweaking” using Lightroom 3.

Now, I’m sure there are better ways of converting my JPEGS from color to black and white (like Nik software’s Silver Efex Pro), but lacking such software, I just used Lightroom to covert my images to Sepia Tone, then dodged, burned, adjusted the blacks, did some vignetting, sharpened and then finally added a bunch of grain. My goal was to create some images that looked “old school”, like pushed Kodak Tri-X 400 with a sepia tone.

For a bit of history, the sepia tone process for photography was developed in the 1700s as a preservation treatment. Photos fixed with sepia-tone (silver sulfide) survived up to 50 percent longer than standard black and white prints. For this reason, most surviving early photography is sepia toned.

Personally, I think these manipulates images below are a bit “over the top” but it’s April Fools’ Day, so why not?

How about you; perhaps today is the day you should pull something out of your archives and see how it looks after some heavy processing, or even go out and try to shoot in a style that’s a departure from your “norm”.

Cheers, Karl

 

 

6 Responses to “Vietnam Photo Tour: Hoi An In Sepia Tone” Subscribe

  1. Erin Wilson April 1, 2013 at 5:10 pm #

    Departure from your norm? Yes! Over the top… I don’t know. It causes me to read your images in a different way; that can’t be a bad thing.

    Nice reminder to get out and stretch 🙂

  2. Sally April 1, 2013 at 9:06 pm #

    A different perspective…life after dark…a bit sinister or mysterious but so cool! I esp like the first…heading for a rendezvous? Well done, as always!

  3. Ed Fitzgerald April 1, 2013 at 10:26 pm #

    YOur style didn’t change only your processing. I like the sepia. Used to do it in my wet darkroom years in college. I can tell you photos from the perspective you shot that they are yours. Jim’s can be the same. His style is similar to yours.

  4. Karl Grobl April 2, 2013 at 4:14 am #

    Dear Erin, Sally and Ed,
    Thanks for you participation and comments, I always enjoy your comments.
    Hope you’re all doing well and enjoying photography wherever you are.
    Cheers,
    Karl

  5. this is lemonade April 3, 2013 at 4:37 pm #

    Beautiful as always. It’s how the people and subjects stand out and share their personalities that is not diminished with the relative lack of colour. In fact, I find the sepia makes them very intriguing. Usually, you photograph such colourful scenes, to see it all differently is certainly no April Fool’s joke.
    Particularly love the lanterns. They probably sing more in this toned down format – the light almost hurts the eyes!

  6. Mary K April 6, 2013 at 4:13 am #

    Love…love…love the sepia!

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