Black And White #4

I've been amazed at John's black and white conversions at My Viewfinder.

Yesterday, Saturday, as Lovely Wife and I headed back across central Florida from Zephyrhills to Palm Bay, we stopped a couple of times in Kissimmee at Lake Tohopekaliga. I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce that (I'm usually pretty good at pronouncing hard words) but everyone calls it Lake Toho anyway, so I guess I will here too.

I on our second stop along Lake Toho, I pulled off of Neptune Road beside someone's property, hoping that the land I parked on with no home wasn't their property too. Anyhoo, I walked back to the edge of these folk's lakefront property to take some photos of these amazing yellow water lotus.

We were driving along and I looked to the right and saw these things from the lake's edge behind these people's house, out all the way as far as I could see. Intense green and yellow. So I turned around and found my dubious parking place, got out and walked to the water's edge and took a few shots, then got out of there. I was afraid someone would come out of the house and yell at me. I tried to put out a very strong stupid, pushy tourist vibe; acting like I had every right to be in their yard.

Anyway, these two shots screamed at me to try to convert them to decent B&W images. I worked with them a while and ended up liking these versions. Trying the Orton/gaussian blur thingy looked good too, but in the end I liked the crispness of these better.

Thanks for the inspiration John!

I'll try to get around to visiting everyone and commenting later this afternoon.

Also, I posted my usual Sunday Picture Post over at my other blog, Least Significant Bits, and there are a couple more pics of these lotus, but in color, if y'all care to see them.