The Wild West has been immortalized in movies like Tombstone, A Fistful of Dollars and The Good the Bad and the Ugly. In this realm of action-packed movie fiction, we forget that the Western world on the screen actually reflects historic towns in a very real time when ladies of the night showcased their goods in birdcage brothels, sheriffs walked down dirt streets, spurs clicking in the wind, and gun fights broke out in passionate brawls.
It’s easy to imagine these movies being filmed on some Hollywood set where buildings could fall over with the flick of your finger, and references to the West seem so prevalent that it’s hard to think about that time without conjuring up comical silent movie scenes where cowboys jump off bridges onto horses, and villains curl waxy moustaches with vindictive smiles.
Seeing a “mercantile” store, for instance, took me straight back to the days of playing the 1990’s computer game Oregon Trail, where young kids found themselves playing pioneers of the West that try to make it to the next town without dying from typhoid or drowning in attempts to cross a small creek. So with all these pop culture references running through my mind, it was surreal to come across Tombstone, an authentic town from the Old West.
I thought it’d be fun to play with this idea of the Wild West by creating some “old timey” photos using my Samsung NX300. By mixing a couple of different features, I was able to recreate a sepia effect that you might see from antique photos of that era.
To do so I chose to edit my photos using some of the color effects available on my camera. You can access these effects by choosing a photo to edit and selecting the color palette symbol on your Samsung NX300’s touch screen.
From there I lowered the saturation of my photos, almost to the point where they were black and white. Then I increased the color temperature to a slightly warmer tone. You can see the results in the images below…
By mixing and layering different effects on the Samsung NX300, you can customize your photos to convey a completely different feeling, and what’s cool is that you can apply these effects after you’ve already taken your photo. That means you can pick and choose from what you’ve already shot and create a brand new image, since the camera saves all edited images as new images on your memory card. So next time you’re feeling adventurous try out the color effect options on your Samsung NX300 and see how it can morph your photos into something a bit more unusual. Happy shooting!
Comments are closed.
