I am still very pleased with the colors produced by the Leica M9-P's mid-2000s CCD sensor. In the images above and below I used different presets to add warmth and saturation to really make the colors pop. Buildings under construction are not places normally associated with being overly colorful, but these two were really showing off. It is a little hard to see, but there is an American flag hanging from the yellow crane in the image above. It was Memorial Day weekend and the crews were off.

There is a soft and "quiet" quality to the images that also add warmth of a different kind to the images. They are more inviting.

This image was not processed with any preset, throwing off the theme of this post a bit. There is still a lot of warmth in the image and the complementary colors work. This is/was the home of photographer Victor Skrebneski, who was born in Chicago in 1929. Many credit him for launching Cindy Crawford's career. Skrebneski has produced many well-known images during a remarkable career. There used to be a car--I think it was a Benz or a Jaguar--with plates that simply said "V" on them. I wonder if he still lives here.

Click images to view on black.

There are not that many obvious or "traditional" landscape shooting opportunities in Chicago. I am not looking hard enough. I live just over two miles from Lake Michigan so the lakefront is a good spot for doing some landscapes. But they are technically cityscapes.

This particular day was a fairly nice day. It started with nice blue sky with puffy white clouds, but it was windy and rain was coming. Thicker clouds started rolling in. I envisioned taking these shots as monochromes from the start. Even though the sky started nicely blue, the images were just too blue because the water was blue as well, and there were no other interesting colors present.

I used Fujifilm's Acros black and white film simulation with a red filter as my base. Then I adjusted whites, blacks, highlights, and shadows in post.

I wished there were some more clouds in the sky for the shot below to balance it out better.

The clouds thickened and made for more drama.

As an aside I do not currently own any zoom lenses on my Fujifilm X system. When I was shooting Canon my main lens was a zoom lens. For all of these shots I may have either zoomed in or out if I had a zoom. However, I am enjoying using just prime lenses. I see things differently, and I do not miss having a zoom at all. I used to shoot just primes prior to my Canon system so it is not something new to me. I also do not feel that one type of lens is "better" than the other. They are all tools, just with different applications. It is up to the individual to utilize them as they see fit.

Click images to view on black.

Exploring Colors

Land/cityscape in Black and White