One thing that I love to do is take everyday objects and represent them in a way that makes you look at the thing anew. In this case I took one of my kids to a swimming lesson that was being held at a facility that was basically a dome inflated by air and used as a building. The day was gray and raining and that offered me the opportunity to explore the domes in a new way. Unfortunately the domes are surrounded by fences (I guess for good reason) so I was somewhat limited in my approach to these objects. I was looking at capturing the dome and sky in the same tonal range. I took the photo with my Leica M8 in the RAW mode using a 28mm lens. To get to the place I wanted to be I cropped the original image in Lightroom then dumped the file into Photoshop and used Nik Software Silver Efex Pro to turn the image into B&W. Once the B&W was tuned the way I wanted I used the Diffuse Glow filter to soften things then brought the photo back into Lightroom and added some vignette. Once I like it I took the photo back into Photoshop and spotted the photo and cleaned a little damage to the dome up to get a very smooth texture.
All this took about 30 minutes to accomplish. My hope is the image that was created has a touch of mystery and abstract quality. That’s what I was trying to capture when I took the photo. I find it interesting that when I shoot a picture (several really) I have a fairly clear idea of the image I’m trying to create. In this digital age there are so many tools at the artists disposal that you (I feel) must practice restraint and focus on the image content not the gimmicks. What do you think?