Something has me thinking about summer. No doubt it’s the cold, wet weather. Every summer I’m lucky enough to have a wonderful week of vacation with other family members on Washington Island, which is located off the tip of Door County in northeastern Wisconsin. During the week I often go over to Rock Island State Park.
Rock Island was purchased by Chester Thordarson in 1910. He was an inventor who made his fortune in electrical transformers and he turned the island into a family retreat. One of the many buildings that he constructed there was a boathouse and hall that was made from stones quarried or collected on the island. Every time I visit the island I can’t resist photographing that building.
Last summer I was intrigued by the streaks of sunlight filtering through an overhead wooden walkway down into the boathouse. I took quite a few pictures trying to capture what I saw and felt. Because of the harsh light I decided to take multiple exposures and use high-dynamic-range (HDR) processing to generate the final version. When I returned from vacation I tried many HDR variations and just couldn’t get a result that I liked. After abandoning it for a while I finally decided that I needed to make it a black-and-white image. The rocks in the boathouse had a moss green colorcast to them and I realized that it was primarily the color that was bothering me. So, I used Silver Efex Pro to make the conversion and was finally pleased with the result.
For someone who started out over 40 years ago printing only in black-and-white in my home darkroom, you’d think it wouldn’t have taken me so long to see this image in black-and-white.