It was a typical overcast afternoon in Dublin on March 7, 2017.
I was in position above Irish Rail’s Phoenix Park Tunnel on Conyngham Road, not far from my bus stop.
Not far off camera to the right was the location of the Islandbridge apartment where I resided on/off for 15 years when visiting in Dublin.
Working with my first Lumix LX7, I made this image of Irish Rail’s UP IWT Liner from Ballina.
The RAW file was a little on the dark side, so I adjusted the image using Lightroom. I lightened the shadow areas, while working with the ‘Select Sky’ feature to hold detail in the sky area.
Not long after exposing this photo, I walked down to Ryan’s pub on Park Gate Street to meet some friends for a pint.
In July 2003, I exposed a single frame of 120 size Tri-X looking toward the old Duncormick Station on Irish Rail’s lightly used South Wexford line.
I’d processed the film in Ilfotec HC shortly after the time of exposure. The other day I scanned this photo along with other images on the roll.
Working with Adobe Lightroom 5.0, I made use of the ‘select sky’ feature under the ‘New Mask’ option (located at the righthand side of the control panel and indicated with a pixilated circle icon) to make the sunset sky more dramatic.
Previously, I would have achieved a similar effect by creating a linear gradiation mask to make my adjustments.
The advantage of the ‘select sky’ mask is that it neatly segregates the sky area from the rest of the image and allows for a cleaner adjustment while requiring less work on my part.
In this case, to make the sky appear more dramatic, I used the ‘clarity’ slider, moving to the right (+) which increases the constrast without a substantial loss of detail.
Below are both the unaltered scan of the original black & white negative, and my adjusted version. In addition, I’ve included a screenshot of hte Adobe Lightroom control panel.
Unadjusted reversed scan from the original 120-size black & white negative. This was scaled for internet presentation.Adjusted scan with ‘select sky’mask feature used to improve the sky contrast.Adobe Lightroom 5.0 control panel. Notice the position of the Clarity slide while in the ‘create new mask’ -‘select sky’ mode.
