Well, not actually through the wall. Just an HDR in monochrome of the opening in the wall at Tryon Palace. On this very hot day, I was able to capture quite a few nice images and this one seems to work better as a bolder, graphic expression. And a little cooler than my memory serves.

For anyone who has an interest a little history about William Tryon’s later activities, you can check out this post on “Too Much Glass” by Mark Garbowski.

Processing: This image was produced from nine shots with Nik HDR Efex Pro and converted to monochrome using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. After working with the grasses and bricks to bring out the incredible texture, I moved it into Adobe Photoshop where I applied Curves, for more contrast and Levels for a general lightening of the scene.

I then added a new layer to paint a light gray area over the large tree trunk on the right. This gave me more selective contrast control. I also manually painted a dark vignette to draw more attention to the center of the scene.  Since most black and white monochromes seem to have a warm tone, I decided to apply a very light blue Photo Filter at 25%. It’s not obvious but it gives the scene a cooler look. Bet you didn’t notice that! Just in case, here’s the gray scale version.Equipment used:  Nikon D700 with 28-70mm f/2.8 lens set at 35mm, f/11, ISO 3200.