Thursday, April 18, 2024

Pick Your Favorite, Please...


After I photographed the tree at the Vanderbilt Museum, I walked over to these antique columns that are in a semicircle at the entrance of the Vanderbilt Estate.  The land drops away from here for several hundred feet, down to the water and it is a spectacular view off to the left of this photo. These six columns are a thousand years old and come from Carthage, now the modern Tunisa.  They stand 14 feet high and weigh 4000 pounds each and were installed when the estate was built in 1912.


So I am torn about which photograph I like best.  Color is such a part of how I see the world and in creating photographs, but I love black & white photographs a lot!  So I converted this photo to black & white and even now I can't decide which photograph is my favorite.  Please help me out here, and vote for your favorite photograph of the two!  Save me!  Thank you!



 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

sometimes it works to see in b&w. ginger

Anonymous said...

I prefer the first one. The soft shades of color are inviting you to visit and enjoy the view. Perhaps the B&W is appropriate for the age of the columns.
Joan

Anonymous said...

In the black & white. I am distracted by the lights in the background. In the color photo, I am enjoying the rich colors of the grass, the brick path and the soft blue gray color of the sky. Betsey

ken schwarz said...

I did my due diligence by clicking back and forth between the two photo options. On one hand, I like the red brick walkway, green grass with the stately marble columns but I couldn't help but be distracted by the rather cheaply made park bench. So for me, I lean towards the Black and White version which makes the columns from antiquity more dominant and interesting in the scene.

PS: I think Mr. Vanderbilt should have left the columns in Carthage.

Ken Spencer said...

Thank you all for your comments. I really appreciate that you all took the time to think about these two photographs. This is funny n- Betsey said she was distracted by the lights in the background. Well, I was too, and retouched the lights out, but I posted the B&W one with the lights in it because it matched the color image. It is so hard for me to walk away from the color, because I see better in color than black and white.