last morning in vienna

On my last morning in Vienna, I just strolled around the streets in and around the city centre, taking some last shots before it was time to return to the hotel, get my bags and go to the airport.

I like cities that have trams. It's my favourite means of transport in a city, which is probably because I grew up near a city with over a dozen tram lines. I especially like the older ones, that still look like the goold old, old fasioned trams. In my city, the old ones are almost all gone, replaced by modern, much more silent (almost too silent for my taste) ones. In Vienna, there are still some older ones left. And they're a nice red, which is especially nice for a selective colour treatment.

Vienna, Burgtheater, May 2011

Looks like this is going to develop into a little series of "Selective Colour Vienna" :).

selective colour

Don't you just love the selective colour effect? I think it's a really great effect and can looks just gorgeous on certain photos (unless you don't overuse it). I also think it always looks so impressive and extremely professional, and I've never quite dared to try to find out how to do it. The only selective colour conversion I've used so far is the very simple desaturating all colours except the one you want to keep with a hue/saturation levels adjustment. Which obviously is very limited, as it only works if the colour in question doesn't appear anywhere else in the picture, which is rarely the case.

A Flickr friend of mine is using this effect very impressively and inspiringly, and has kindly shared with me the how to. I also found this easy to follow, step-by-step video tutorial (I just love video tutorials!!) and finally found the "courage" to give it a try myself. The trick is a simple layer mask. Which Photoshop Elements 8 unfortunately doesn't have, but it's actually very easy to "borrow" one. It's explained in the video as well. And then, it's just brush work :).

Vienna, Staatsoper, May 2011

This is just a quick try, but I'm quite pleased with the result. I was waiting for quite some time, hoping for this bright tourist sightseeing bus to drive away and allowing me a full view of the Staatsoper. But it just wouldn't move, and so it now became a feature :). You can of course experiment much more with the background, to turn it into a great black & white background, and maybe even add textures. In the video tutorial, the black & white conversion is done with using one of the presets, which is something, I somehow, don't know why, just don't really like using. But for a first try, I think it's quite okay :). I'll certainly be doing more of this now!

adjusting/removing colour

I found this adjustable black & white tutorial while looking for ways of converting colour images into black & white. It's a completely new way for me but it works very nicely and allows much more room to play with hue, saturation and light, than for example the conversion using a gradient map (which is what I usually do).

Just a quick try, I'll have to try it out again later, and explore the possibilities.

Vienna, Staatsoper, May 2011

waiting...

... for the clouds to disappear, and the sun to come out, again and the temperature to raise a few degrees. For the the coffee drinkers and cake eaters.

Vienna, Graben, 29/05/2011

wiener würstl

This Würstelstand (wurst stand) in the centre of the city, near my hotel quickly became one of my favourite places during my long weekend in Vienna. You can get a whole range of sausages, but my alltime favourite is definitely the Käsekrainer - a sausage filled with melted cheese. Yummy! What I also liked is that you get your sausage not only cut in pieces, but it is served on a realy china plate, and not the usual paper/plastic one. So there's no rushing away, eating your meal while running around (although you can get a hot dog version with all sausages for this), but you have to take a few minutes to eat your sausage.

A digital colour shot, turned into b&w and with some slight contrasts and levels adjustments.

And with an added warm-up filter.

life in black & white

While writing a blog post about the prints of my first black & white roll of film in ages, I suddenly thought that wouldn't it be nice to have a separete blog just about black & white?

Black & white photography is something I've been wanting to explore for some time, be it converting digital colour images into black & white versions (and there are so many ways to do this) or shooting with good old black & white film (and maybe one day even considering doing my own developing) with my goold old Minolta Hi-Matic 7s II.

So here we go, my newly created blog dedicated to black & white.


There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds (G. K. Chesterton)


I'm not entirely sure if it's such a great idea to start another blog, when I'm already struggling to keep up with all my projects, Flickr, blogging, painting, art journaling, online classes etc. But we'll see how it goes. Right now, it just feels like a good idea :)