Newport Beach.
It was a chilly November day and with a freezing wind. At the end of the beach I saw this kite surfer wet in his wetsuit. Madness.
Half an hour later he had packed in and the wind was blowing onshore so I was really fortunate to be able to get a couple of frames with everything lined up.
Another of my Black & White experiments. I’ve done less than ten intentional B&W images so still very much meandering about on my learning curve.
With this one I wanted to isolate the surfer from the background but still keep in the details in the waves. The lens flare had the curious but useful effect of lightening the surfer himself, so I didn’t have to do extra tweaking to bring him out. High contrast and dark: why does that keep appealing to me?
For 7 Days with Flickr Black and White/ Sepia Thursday theme.
Thanks for taking time to look. Very much appreciated. I hope you enjoy the image :)
[Cropped and leveled and produced a medium contrast image in LR.
Then in Affinity Photo added a Haze filter to clear the sky and clouds; a bit of sharpening with the Clarity filter.
Converted to B&W with Nik Silver Efex (free), adjusting for a high structure and careful contrast to keep the sun and the surfer but not the background; slight Sepia tint to increase the tonal range; dark edges to take out the foreground and the flare above the sun.
Used a Curves adjustment to balance the results (again) and then an Unsharp Mask with a mask to sharpen everything except the kite and the top horizon of the hill which were prone to sharpening halos. No vignette.]
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