CELEBRATING SEPIA
This blog entry focuses on the use of a sepia filter to enhance the mood of a photo. Take the shot above, for instance, I like to think of the scene as the fenced path leading up to the home a Civil War soldier returns to when the battles are concluded.
The time-honored spire of NYC’s Chrysler Building looks good in color, even better is black & white, but to my minds best in sepia.
Check out this Parisian scene in sepia, with nothing notably modern intruding to lessen the impact.
Sepia looks good on certain statues (but not all), such as this one
from Paris.
It works in Italy also, as witness this birds-eye view from
Venice’s St. Marks Square . . .
. . . as well as this stately courtyard.
On our own turf, here’s the classic Brooklyn Bridge – okay in color, more striking in black & white, but to my eye even better in sepia.
I like this shot I took across Central Park in color. I’m also taken with the black & white and sepia renditions.
Here’s one of my favorite Central Park images, but now with a sepia twist on the venerable scene.
Sepia has to be used sparingly on people, but I feel it definitely fits these parading Civil War warriors. . . .
. . . as well as their World War I counterparts.
It also adds a turn-of-several-centuries sweetness to this Canadian tourist guide, decked out in her costume from the old days.
Here’s a current NYC street scene, in color, black & white, and sepia – which do you prefer?
Another NYC vista – what do you think?
Sepia, like black & white, is useful on monuments, as you can see from this shot of NYC’s Soldiers and Sailors Monument . . .
. . . and it’s particularly appropriate on this accompanying structure
listing famed Civil War battles.
For what it’s worth, I think sepia works well on an old-fashioned carousel.
But here’s a scene where I wouldn’t advise it – where the color differentiations are at the heart of the photo. The green-red-yellow-white shades of the color shot are simply obliterated in both the black & white and sepia versions.
I like what sepia does for churches . . .
. . . but even more than on the big city cathedrals, I prefer to apply sepia to back-country churches like this one in Canada . . .
. . . or its counterpart in rural France.
Where there’s a church, there generally are tombstones . . .
. . . as with these, by which the loving daughter
was reunited with her father in 1802.
Here are three views of a cemetery – I think the sepia tone adds something to the scene.
And I was really moved by this peaceful cemetery in the Ardennes that my buddy Bill Silver and I visited in 1984 (the 40th anniversary of World War II’s Battle of the Bulge), which holds the remains of British soldiers felled in that memorable conflict.
This shot that I took in Arlington Cemetery is one of my favorite
black & white photographs. You can almost hear the somber tread of the funeral cortege from the adjacent road. It too does well in sepia.
If you’re interested in exploring the use of sepia, I should note that you need to have Photoshop (or a comparable app) on your computer to make the conversion. The process isn’t too complicated, and I’d be happy to send you the step-by-step photoshop tutorial that my knowledgeable colleague Raymond gave me when I started doing this.
Old buildings are prime targets for sepia, as in this rooftop view from above Manhattan’s West End Collegiate Church . . .
. . . or this handsome structure in Charleston, S.C. . . .
. . . or this Napa Valley winery . . .
. . . or this old building in Princeton receiving the late afternoon shadows from a stately tree.
Winter snow scenes, which flourish in black & white, also take on a timeless hue through the use of sepia . . .
. . . as in this scene from NYC’s Carl Schurz Park.
I’ll close this collection with two evocative sepia shots from New Orleans.
I hope this collection has aroused your interest in sepia.