striking tools for any purpose - seems he was a real expert. A good find.

seems like you're seeing in the same wavelength as I, Doug ... see ref here http://www.myfourthirds.com/document.php?id=20876 ...my kind of motif , and a good one ...cheers ;-))

The tools look shiny and new, must be for show only, ;) Nice PP work and B&W treatment.

Wolfgang, this was a working blacksmith shop in Virginia. The forge with a hand cranked blower is in the background. Cheers

You're right, DV - looks as though they could be from the same era - one shop doing carpentry and the other blacksmithing. :-)

DV, I didn't even look at the title - sorry bout that - but it does fit both photos. :-))

QV, I think the processing removes a lot of the visable wear and tear. I used a "Panatomix X" filter which produces extremely fine grain so I think that adds to the "new" look. This shop was in daily use and the dust, rust, and smell were all pretty obvious. :-)

Like the crop and light... well seen..

Quite the collection he has there. Like the perspective of the picture, and how it really draws your attention to those hammers.

Doug, I think this has just fantastic potential (light, atmosphere, depth) but somehow I think it just does not fully work. I am not sure what it is, maybe the light being just slightly too harsh and processing could not soften it really, or my first thought was that the IS screwed this up up because it somehow feels so "digital" to me (no halos but still not "real"). So since I have been studying this for maybe 15 minutes I loaded this into PS: now I think it would benefit from a levels adjustment lowering the dark tones just short of blocking them. Then I selected the tools in the center, added just a tiny bit of local contrast and some minor sharpening. Then I inverted the selection and blurred the inverted selection. Finally some minimal red and yellow shift in the color balance and now it looks much closer to me to what this image holds in the first place. If this was my picture I would spend much more time editing as diligently as I can. Of course preferences vary greatly and it is kind of different after all the changes I propose. You can see what I did, just to get the idea of the direction I am proposing, clicking on http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee184/klauser_bucket/tools_of_the_trade_k.jpg - if you object to my fooling around with your image and to uploading I will take it down and delete it immediately.

Klaus, thanks for taking the time to work on this image. I'm a novice at B&W conversions, so any advice is appreciated. One of the biggest problems I had was the lighting - the shop was very dark except for the strong lighting coming in from the small side window. The back wall was almost black and the tools were very washed out. I tried to get some balance, and after quite a while, this was the best I could do - but I agree with you, especially after looking at your rendition - it's great. The processing tips will sure be of benefit to me in the future. Feel free to work on any of my photos - I think that's what this site is best at - helping us weaker photographers get better and learning while doing. Regards