Michael Smith PhotoArt Blog

Behind The Shots - Cityscapes in Black & White

This is my inaugural blog post and I'm excited to add this media to my communication mix in sharing my journey.  With this post, I've chosen to dive a little deeper into a couple of photos that I shot earlier this year, recently posted to my galleries, and have been honored to have them printed and hung in the home of our very good friends.  I'll provide some background into why these photos were shot and chosen, and insights to the post-processing applied.

Our friends have a long-standing close affiliation with the St. Louis Zoo and wished to hang some art in their home to reflect that.  They specifically were interested in photographs of the sculptures near the south entrance to the zoo and commissioned me to take those photographs.  Well maybe I have embellished that a little, OK a lot!  Yes, that implies I was being paid handsomely for this shoot, but in reality they asked if I would take some pictures and I immediately responded with "hell yea!".  What a great idea, and I was honored to be asked.

So, on a cold winter day this past January, my wife, Barb, and I went to the zoo around sunset.  I was very pleased with the evening's light, and pleasantly surprised with the beauty that zoo sculptures presented.  Our friends chose the pictures above.  And you ask, why in black and white?  They also preferred that they be processed in black and white.  I did take and process the pictures in color, and then converted to black and white.  All the processing took place in Lightroom Classic.  A discussion of the options and methods for processing in B&W sounds like a great topic for a future blog post.  I did present both versions, and after seeing both, they deliberated a little more before deciding on black and white.

Here's a color version of one of the photos.  Which do you prefer?  I think they're both great. This is one photo that works well either way.  The B&W versions worked best for our friends given where they were to be hung, lighting, wall color and other wall art.  The B&W versions were the right choice for them.  The considerations around B&W versus color are many and worthy of another separate blog post in the future.

They ultimately chose to have them printed on metal with a semi-gloss finish.  These were printed at my favorite local printer in St. Louis, Diversified Labs.  Lastly, I'll cut this off with a shameless plug for the site that I started in the past year for selling my photos online, through Fine Art America and it's affiliate, Pixel.com.  The pictures have been uploaded and are available for purchase there.  Here's a link to my site.

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