Introduction: A very windy day in Newcastle

These were all taken at the Newcastle upon Tyne Castle Keep.  

I took a lot of photos outside too but most of those were not useful because there was a strong wind.  

This was bad for too reasons - it kept blowing Daisy's hair all over the place and it made it hard to keep the camera still enough to take a sharp photo.  

There were also a lot of people (mostly men) staring at Daisy because she is so tall and striking and though she didn't care because she was used to it, it was putting me off a bit.  

I'm one of these people who finds it hard to concentrate if people are watching me:)

We were near the Castle Keep so decided to see if we could get in and have some shelter from the wind and people watching.  

Sometimes you need to just improvise.  

The keep was quite dark but the main gate was open and allowed light in which became our main light source.  I also attempted to use my usual handheld reflector but I'm not sure it made a huge difference other than giving some catchlights to the eyes.

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High Contrast Edits

I used my usual editing process with Lightroom to correct basic exposure etc.  

I thought I would try doing some high contrast black and white shots for change from my usual style as an experiment.  

Black and white conversion was done in Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 which you can get for free (along with all the other Nik Tools worth over $500) - link here.  

I used some tweaking of the contrast curves and a coffee toning filter (from the defaults selection) to achieve this particular look.  I hope you like them.  For useful tutorials on how to achieve more creative effects with Nik Tools I would recommend their Youtube channel here.

These are completely new edits from scratch and took me quite a bit of experimentation to get right.  At least I hope they look right please let me know what you think as this is not my usual style for black and white photos.

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The Photos

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If you like my work and aren't already, please follow me and check out my blog (I mainly discuss photography but I do other topics too) -  @thecryptofiend 

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I have also created a new channel in the chat dedicated to photography of people/portraits called "Photography-portraits-people".  Please check it out and post your photos there.

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Technical Information:

• Nikon D800 Camera
• Sigma 24-70mm/2.8 lens
• Adobe Lightroom CC, Photoshop CC, Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 plugin.
• Model is Daisy Alyss Turnell
• Location is the Castle Keep, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England.

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(Verification for me here: http://www.aapicture.com/about-me)

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Some of my Previous Posts and Tutorials:

• The Updated Steemit Etiquette Guide - New Additions and Your Help Needed
• Karen at the Beach
• A little idea for Steemit that could end up being a big idea for progress: The Ideas Factory
• The Missing FAQ - A Beginners Guide To Using Steemit
• Medical Jargon Buster
• A Collected Photography Post - My Own Work (13 photographs with discussion and new edits)
• Why I hardly use Facebook anymore and prefer to spend my time and money on Steemit
• Mavericks in Science: - Progress Can Mean Standing Up to Dogma (Part 1: Marshall and Warren)