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Time for another black and white impression from the Faroe Islands. This is a texture and detail rich scene from the lagoon near Saksun on Streymoy island. You could see that lagoon in the background in my Saksun photo. After taking photos of the turf houses, I walked down from the village to the sea level just before the incoming high tide and immediately loved the view which opened up before me. Almost straight away I had a vision of how it would look in black and white and today I can share it with you.
It was such a different perspective from the lower level looking up at the surrounding mountains rising steeply from all sides. One can only walk out onto the lagoon and the beach (past the spot where the two cliffs converge) during low tide as otherwise the area gets filled with water. I had enough time to make it down to the lower level and I could already see the water slowly creeping in. It was still early in the tide change and I was able to explore around a little bit.
As I mentioned, I was hit by the level of detail and textures present in front of me. Clouds were lit up nicely but the blue sky still came through strongly. The light seeping through the clouds and hitting the cliffs was able to reveal their structure and detail. There was enough water on the surface already to create a hint of glassy reinfections but the texture of the black sandy bottom still came through the water. I loved the separation between foreground and background while the entire scene was nicely held and tied together by the cliffs and their reflected outlines. I liked the symmetrical 'v' shapes and contours leading through this immense view.
In post processing I worked on enhancing the contrast and detail in the scene. I had to be careful though not to overdo the adjustments (or at least to try and not overdo them) as I did not want an overly gritty and harsh final image. As you can probably surmise, the actual scene was not quite as contrasty. All the detail was there but it was a little more muted. I worked around with different versions, some with more contrast and some more restrained to get the balance right. It was a case of small adjustments one way or the other to see how they affected the image until I was happy with the overall feel and mood.
It is a busy scene, there is no doubt about that, and this may not be to everyone's taste. I do hope you find this image interesting and that you can share the feeling of visual richness that I experienced when I saw this scene in real life. It may hit you hard first up with the amount of detail but that was exactly what I felt when I walked out onto the lagoon on the day.
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This image has been featured in 1 Remix collection.