This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge is brought to us by Patti. She writes, “This week, we’re exploring the interplay of light and shadow–at different times of the day, in different seasons, under natural light, in artificial light. Choose whatever conditions you like. It’s totally up to you. You may also want to process your images in black and white to highlight the light and shadows.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

For my response, I will take Patti’s advice and share images I’ve reprocessed into black and white. One of my favorite tools for black-and-white work is Silver Efex, now at version 3. All of the images shared here were finished in Silver Efex. My opening photo features a dramatic sky with an opening in the clouds allowing sunlight to light a small section of the ocean.

This sculpture of a firefighter carrying a small child away from the site of the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City makes for a powerful image in black-and-white.

Like the opening image, clouds in the sky when processed in black-and-white create a lot of drama. The skies and ocean lose their bright blues and the bases of the clouds look darker and foreboding.

For comparison, you can see in the original color image, that the sky has some drama due to the relatively thicker layers of clouds creating dark shadows in the sky, and darkening the blues of the ocean. Converting it to black-and-white changes the mood of the image.

The bright sky over the Pacific Ocean lights the clouds, but the thick layers create heavy shadows darkening the ocean and with the camera set to expose to the bright sky, the boats and island lighthouse are in silhouette. This image was captured from the beach near the iconic resort, Hotel del Coronado, off the coast of San Diego, California.

At San Jose del Cabo in Mexico, a busker sat on a bench in front of an abandoned souvenir shop. I reprocessed this image for the challenge this week, first loading it into Luminar Neo to add some bokeh to the background. I then exported it to Silver Efex 3 for final conversion to sepia-toned black-and-white. I decided to add a frame at the last minute.

It was nearing sunset and I was walking the beach near the Hotel Playa in Mazatlan, Mexico. I watched a lone horseman riding near the water’s edge. I knew that if I waited to take the photo until the horse and rider passed in front of the strong backlight from the setting sun, I would create a silhouette of the rider. Though there was very little color in the original image (except for the tone of the golden hour reflecting in the ocean,) I decided to convert the image to black-and-white with a slight sepia tone.

I am a big fan of black-and-white, and Patti’s challenge allowed me to share a few of my favorite conversions thanks to Silver Efex. Next week, Ann-Christine throws us a curve with a most interesting challenge. If you’d like to participate in the challenge each week, you’ll find out how to join us here.

John Steiner