Variations

While browsing through a gallery of paintings of Charleston scenes, I came across this painting of a locally famous restaurant, Slightly North Of Broad, also known as S.N.O.B. It's an interesting building and somewhat of a local landmark, so I wanted to make a photograph similar to the painting.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get to the location at the crack of dawn, so there was no way to avoid having a scene devoid of people as in the painting. Oh well, nothing to do but to wait until the constant stream of pedestrians provided me with some folks who looked fairly "average". No loud Hawaiian shirts, please. I came up with version:

Original Color Photo

Then, to make it look more like a painting, I played around in the digital darkroom and came up with another version. At web resolution, you can't really see any difference, so here is a 100% crop that shows more detail:

100% Crop (Click on image to enlarge.)

Of course, I also had to try a B&W version, which after all the previous work, I ended up liking best.

B&W Version

It's not unusual for me to end up with something quite different from my original idea. I guess that's what keeps this hobby interesting for me.