Vienna: color or black&white?

Have I mentioned anywhere on my blog, that Vienna is one of my favourite cities in the world? 😉  Browsing my collection of photos I took during my last stay, I picked out a few for editing.

I usually first go for the basic settings like white balance, exposure, contrast, highlights, blacks and work my way through the entire editing process. Then, still in Lightroom, I do make a virtual copy of the resulting picture, before I start to work on the next “level of editing”. Working onward from a virtual copy always gives me the safety, that I have a properly developed picture to fall back on. I also can decide to try out a different path in the editing process by simply creating another virtual copy of the “fallback picture”. AND: since in Lightroom, the original RAW picture is never touched nor in any way altered, I have the freedom to go anywhere I want without compromising the original file or picture quality.

Talking about the “next level”: for me, that means, that I start to add my personal feelings to the picture – the way, I have experienced that very moment, I took it. It’s just my current “style” of approaching photography: trying to convey my mood, the feelings I had or how I remember that moment, I took the picture. Sometimes, that can be achieved by just again adjusting levels, making the picture a bit darker or lighter. Sometimes, it’s choosing styles like LowKey or HighKey, sometimes, it means working with filters or by additional using simulated stock film. But my first decision usually is “do I go color or black&white?”, before I think about using the aforementioned adjustments.

This time, I just could not decide the latter, so I went for both paths: color and black&white (an easy task with my workflow!). So it’s for you to decide, which versions are more appealing to you…