I was reading a very interesting interview of Ken Burns done by Outdoor Photographer magazine about the influence of photographers in promoting our National Parks. Burns recently completed another of his many excellent productions which you may have watched on PBS: America's Best Idea. I got the idea to take the old photographs provided by Ken Burns for the article and apply my recently honed improvement skills. Here's one now.
You could argue that this is a treasure in and of itself and shouldn't be altered. I'd agrue that time and the elements have already altered it and I'd like to see what how it appeared in the black and white of its original development. So there...
Anyway I went ahead because there's no one in my house to tell me to leave well enough alone and simply applied the grayscale adjustments available in Adobe Photoshop CS4 along with some selective adjustment to contrast and brightness. I didn't apply a sharpening filter but I think the adjusted photograph looks sharper because my alterations brought out some detail that was not so obvious in the sepia toned original.
Since I suspect that Mr. Burns is not a devoted reader of this blog I won't expect to learn his opinion of my work. That means I can continue to mess with his pictures for my own, and possibly your, amusement. Here's one more from the pictures Burns provided for the OP article.
This one is not in need of a lot of fixing. It retains the grascale look but could use some contrast adjustment
The changes here are pretty subtle but I'm just having fun at the expense of your time.
Just for grins and for those who may use Photoshop in a similar exercise here's a look at the curves adjustment layer I used to pic the tones I wanted lighter and darker.
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