The Old Courthouse

Photo of the Day

Over the weekend I made it back to my hometown for a few hours. The day was packed, but I did manage to make a quick drive to get a couple of pictures taken. The old courthouse in the middle of town has always been something that people like to see when they come in. In fact some people like to photograph courthouses in every town they visit. I am not one of those, but I do manage to take pictures of the interesting ones. I did not intend to take this picture when I was there. I was there to photograph the indian sculpture that you can see on the bottom right. While doing that I decided to try this shot which actually turned out okay. It looked like every other courthouse picture that I have made though. That is why I tried something different here.

Technical Data

This shot went through a little work. At first I took three bracketed images shot at -2, 0, and +2 and ran them through Photomatix. I did not like what the color versions did to my sky so I tried the black and white presets in Photomatix. I liked the look, but not the noise that the program introduces into the picture. I really like Photomatix, but it really does not take care of noise very well. I ran the photo through some black and white presets in Lightroom, but I thought of something that might look better. Every time I saw the picture in black and white I thought of an old post card. I took the picture and ran it through On One Software’s Perfect Black and White to try a couple of older views. I liked this one called Calotype Paper Negative. All that was missing here was the writing that you used to see on the older photos. It is not my normal picture, but I like the way that it turned out.