The last subject on the photo marathon yesterday was mirrored and for that subject I shot this picture. Can you figure out how I shot it? I’ll tell you in a few days but It would be fun to get some theories from you in the comments first.

I attended another photo marathon today. This one was a lot trickier than the one I attended in Copenhagen a few weeks ago. 12 subjects to be photographed during 5 hours. We also only got on click on the camera for each subject. No deleting and trying again. Every picture had to be in order on the memory card (they check the numbering of the pictures). If one picture was over-exposed by mistake or something there was nothing to do, just move on to the next subject. Pleasure was one of the subjects, in the middle somewhere. We had a break and got some food at that time and I shot this picture for that subject. It was definitely pleasure for me at least.

This time an image shot in my backyard. Kind of at least. It’s shot down at the beach where I live. Comparing to the other images that were shot on the other side of the planet I call this my backyard As you probably can see from the shadows it’s shot at sunset. I see a flower in this picture.

Sorry for the short break but now I’m back with the 4:th image in this series. This one is from Varanasi in India. A wonderful place to photograph. Shot from a rowing boat on the Ganges river.

Guess where this picture is from. I’m sure you are right. It’s from the spice market in Old Delhi. I just keep finding “new” pictures among the pictures I shot there that I think works with black and white. But in the next post in this series you will see a picture from Varanasi instead. Still in India though.

I didn’t add a toning to this image. I like the old feeling I get in this picture with just a standard black and white conversion. It feels like it’s from the fifties or something. I think it has something to do with the composition as well. To me old portraits usually looks like this. People just standing straight in front of the camera. No “fancy” composition or pose.

I have moved things around a bit and the RSS feed for my blog is now here instead.

I’m now running everything on WordPress, not just the stuff in /blog as before. So /blog is not available anymore but you will get redirected automatically if you go there. The main page for everything is now www.rogermadsen.com. Right now it’s just a slide show as before but soon I will list latest blog posts and comments and stuff. Sort of like a start page for my blog with a summary of everything. If you want to read just the blog post like before they are now at www.rogermadsen.com/posts.

Here’s the second image in this series. Shot at the same place as the previous one. I shot this at 200 mm/f4 with my Nikon D3. I have probably said this a couple of times before but I will never forget the afternoon I spent at the spice market in Old Delhi. I have never experienced such flow when it comes to photography. Great light and great people. I got some great images that afternoon.

One feature I like in Silver Efex Pro is the burn edges feature. You can see that I have added that on the bottom and right edge of this image. It gives a more square vignetting that I usually like more than the round vignetting. Another feature you have in Sliver Efex Pro is toning. I have added just a small touch of split toning on this one.

I’m starting a new short series on the blog. Since I got Nik Software Silver Efex Pro I have just fallen in love with black and white images. I really like the result I get from using that software. Of course there are still a lot of tweaking to be done, it’s not just to push a button and you are done, but being able to do everything at one place in one software makes it much easier. And there must be something else going on in the software as well because no matter how hard I try I can never get as good result using just Lightroom or Photoshop.

So, for ten posts in this series I’m going to produce ten black and white photographs using Silver Efex Pro. It doesn’t have to be a newly photographed image. I think it mostly will be old images that I will go back to that are just waiting there on the hard drive to be processed and used. This first one is of a worker at a spice market in Old Delhi that I shot back in January.

By the way, I didn’t win anything on the Copenhagen photo marathon. Buhuu… But there is a new photo marathon in Helsingborg in a few weeks. I’m hoping to win some prizes on that one instead. Anyway, most of the fun is in just participating and practicing your brain to think creatively. It is a lot of fun doing these kind of things.

Here’s another example of what you can do with Silver Efex Pro. In the earlier post it might have sounded like I have used Silver Efex Pro for a long time but I haven’t. I have just played with the 15 day trial version for the last two weeks. But today I decided to buy a license for it and to get my moneys worth I have played with it all day It is a really great software with everything you need for B&W conversion at one place.

I have many old pictures laying around that I never realy liked in color and since I didn’t have a good tool for converting them to black and white they have just been laying there. Now I have a little catching up to do and it might be a while before you see another color image from me

Here’s some portraits from the carnival in Copenhagen this year. It was way back in spring but I haven’t got around to the images until now. I used Nik Software Silver Efex Pro to convert these images to black and white. The best software I know of for black and white images.

It’s been a while since I shot anything now but in four weeks I’m off to Morocco for a week of shooting, really looking forward to that!