St.John the Evanelist Church, North Boulder Valley MT

Saint John the Evangelist Catholic Church, North Boulder Valley (Boulder), Montana, USA
Montana State Highway 69
August, 2025

This is an active graveyard and church with gleaming white paint and white crushed stone.  The church itself was closed on the day we visited.

Post-editing fun of a quiet church.

Click for larger view, then arrow-key to the right

(above) Nikon Z5, Nikor 17-28mm at 24mm
F9, 1/640  ISO 200
+1 stop over-exposed (no grey-card; estimated)
Polarized
Non-HDR, hand-held, no tripod

Because of the white church and the white gravel in the graveyard (there is no grass), all photos were exposure compensated at +1 to +1.5 stops.

In post, I converted to Black & White, Infrared, and Sepia.  Infrared is always intriguing.

Paintshop Pro (PSP), Black and White conversion

PSP, Infrared conversion

PSP, Sepia conversion

PSP, lightly edited and cropped (NEF conversion)

PSP, Black and White conversion

Different view.  PSP, Infrared Conversion.  17mm, F9

The 17-28mm f2.8 is my favorite lens.  When I bought the lens, I intended to replicate a 20mm lens from my youth, but time-and-time again, I find the zoom set at 17mm.  The change from 20 to 17 is loads-of-fun.  

(Cropping discussion, below)

The lens does not like to look up, as evidenced in the front facade's dramatic keystone.  I tried to straighten the perspective in the editor and the results were laughable.  Clearly, I do not know how that editing tool works.  Of the two exposures I took, both were failures because of the distortion.

Keystoning, galore.  17mm

An yet, the back-yard graveyard photos were successful.  With these, look at the center of the frame -- the horizon is lurking near-by.  

With wide-angle lenses  cropping is often needed if there is not enough detail in the foreground.  Here are some of my thoughts with one of the photos:

 

After illustrating the cropping marks, I noticed the brilliantly-white outhouse along the right-edge of the frame garnered way-too-much attention and it needed to be dodged.  On my first attempt, the dodging brush was too wide and it also darkened some of the foliage near-by, and this can be seen in this illustration (click to enlarge).  It made the out-building look like an out-of-focus blob.  A second attempt was better.

Of interest, several of the photographs were taken in-camera, as B&W.  When looking through the Z5's electronic view finder, the composition was fantastic, viewing the scene in monochrome.  It is exhilarating to take photographs this way.

With the Z5, I almost always "Set Picture Control" as "Vivid"  (the Z5 records the sky in a baby-blue, which does not match my mind's eye).   

However, since I always store the original negatives as .NEF, they were full color when pulled-up in the editor.  Vaguely disappointing; easily fixed in the editor.

Paint Shop Pro's B&W conversion seems flat.  In the real world, there are all kinds of different black and white films and printing papers.  I would like to learn how to make the image look like a Gelatin print and your comments are welcome.

 Related articles:
Using an 18% greycard:
https://imageliner.blogspot.com/2011/11/using-18-grey-card.html