Lake Como, Italy

My Wife and I were driving through the Lake Como region on Italy last summer and came across an older part of the town. We stopped for an Expresso and walked a bit. This house caught my eye, their were angles, curves and peaks, I just had to get a photo. thought a HDR image was in order
I bracketed 3 image's, at 1 ev difference per image, photomatix really brought out the great details...then I converted image to tiff format and used Vivesa to get this final composition...maybe it a bit to over done but I like it :tinysmile_shy_t:.
I've never really worked much with B & W, so this has really been a good theme week.
Big learning curve. Thanks for looking.

Nice image and effect, Paul.

Like the sky. I might touch up the halo on the main roofline, if it were mine, but nice as is.:cheers:

Very nice composition, Paul. I like the grunge effect. The sky works fine with me... may be just a touch of cleaning the smudge on the top center of the tiles and a round of nr on the upper part of the clouds. Excellent processing! TFS.

Very cool image, Paul. Awesome window slit opening and diagonal elements. Your processing gives this construction/architecture a Gothic glow that fits nicely. Good work!

Paul, This is a perfect image for B&W and for someone that doesn't do them often I'd say you hit it out of the park! Great job. Good suggestion by Indranil. I might back off the slight glow around the roof and edges.

Wow! I can't believe the texture in this. Just looking at it, you can practically feel the old, gritty stone. Nice composition and B&W conversion. I agree with Indranil's suggestions.

I like the textures and the dark tones. Not over the top in my view. The shapes are interesting, as are the details. The composition works. I would crop a smidgen off the left side to eliminate the beginning of the arch, and I would add texture to the sky--the contrast with the buildings is too great for my taste. Nice work!

Very nice work, Paul! I agree with the above comments. Love the textures!

Nicely composed and processed, Paul. Cool looking house, love the stonework. Nice job with B&W processing!

Hi Paul, good suggestions by Indranil. Love the detail in the stone work and the compostion is great too!

I thank you all for comments and suggestions...
Indranil, I removed the blemish, NR on the sky...the blemish was actually a dark stone....
Denise...I removed the sky, this was caused by late evening sun being behind the mountains
I like the final image even more...thanks

Looks better Paul!

Congratulations.