This past Spring's club U14 soccer season was a very busy time, both personally and professionally, which prevented me from spending much time in post with the photos I took at my son's games. Overall, I took approximately 8000 photos of tournaments and league games. Throughout the Summer I have been pecking away at them and this series is one that I knew I wanted to convert to black and white from the moment I downloaded them from the camera.

Photographed in April on a rainy night under the lights at Herkimer Community College with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400MM F/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens, all the shots were taken handheld under an umbrella. The lighting was from stadium lights overhead and there were orange flood light opposite of my shooting position on the sideline that helped capture the rain drops and provided opportunities for some interesting back-lighting. Most of these photos are shot wide open at ISO 6400. 

With Google ending support for Nik's fantastic Silver Efex Pro, I've been looking for a replacement black and white conversion application. I recently started using Macphun's Luminar and I am becoming more and more impressed, so I decided to try Macphun's Tonality. For these images I applied an Ilford 100 ISO black and white film emulation then adjusted the structure, microstructure, and contrast. My initial impressions of Tonality is that it has much more capability than Silver Efex Pro, but I'm missing the interface and ability to quickly apply very localized changes with Silver Efex Pro. I'm sure I will eventually reach the same level of comfort and efficiency with more time and experience.

Oh, and regarding the game. The boys lost a close game 2-0, but they kept it close as I recall deep into the second half until they just ran out of gas against a physically much larger team. The weather was terrible, but it made for some great photo opportunities.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Color Images: