This is an image born of pandemic boredom. I was driving around the South Carolina countryside looking for something to do when I stumbled across this historic building in downtown Abbeville, SC.
I had a specific look in mind for this image. I shot it with the Fujifilm X100V, with the Acros simulation on, so I had a black and white JPG. At first I wanted to see how close I could get to that using darktable’s new color calibration tools. I thought maybe I’d make a style or something. But then as I was playing with it, it ended up going in a different direction.
I like the end result better than the Fuji JPG, but it definitely isn’t very Acros, which in my mind is most notable for its gradation and soft white-to-black fall off. I abandoned that in favor of this harsher, contrastier look, which I thought added some drama to an otherwise fairly boring composition.
