5 Years Ago – New Orleans

I find it helpful to look back and see what my photography was like in the past. That is one reason I occasionally post an image taken five years ago (and, okay, another reason is that I don’t have any great new stuff to show). It is also fun to take an old image that I hadn’t done anything with and see what I can do now. In this addition of the 5 years ago series,  I give you an image I took in New Orleans. In 2009, Tanya and I went to New Orleans for a convention. December is a great time to visit there, and I wouldn’t hesitate to go again at this time of year. New Orleans is a fun city for travel photography (and for the food too!). The image above is of the Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France, also known as the  St. Louis Cathedral, in Jackson Square – a wonderful building to photograph.

The image above was taken in color, worked in Lightroom, sent to Photoshop, and converted to black and white with the Nik Silver Efex Pro plugin (I do love that plugin). I was not too impressed with my original image, shown here without any processing other than the default settings in Lightroom. Looking at the unprocessed version, I can see why I chose not to do anything with it five years ago. I’m lucky I didn’t delete it. Part of the learning process for me has been gradually gaining the ability to look at a less than perfect scene or image and imagine what can be done with it. I’m still improving on this ability today. I don’t think I could have made the image above from this starting RAW file five years ago.

If you would like to see a few more photos from that trip five years ago, please visit my New Orleans gallery on by website.