This week it’s Anne’s turn to challenge us to think about black-and-white photography, or as is mostly done in today’s digital world, color photos converted to monochrome. She writes, “Are you ready to show off your black and white or monochrome images? I’d like to see them. Did you shoot them in color and how did you process them?” You can read her entire challenge post here.

All of my images featured here are black-and-white conversions from digital color images. The opening image of the Red River near Fargo, North Dakota was beautiful in color, but after conversion to black-and-white, I don’t think it lost anything in the translation. All but one of the images here were converted with Silver-Efex from DxO Software.

As Anne said in her post, converting to sepia after a black-and-white conversion is also a monochrome presentation. Canyonlands National Park presented me with several opportunities for black-and-white conversions. This image is my favorite from that gallery.

On our Alaska cruise in 2014, we sailed out of Seattle. As we left the city, I was presented with a view of the city that includes the Space Needle, probably Seattle’s most recognizable architecture.

On that same cruise, we visited Glacier Bay. It was a cloudy, dreary day when we visited the park that is accessible only by watercraft. Silver Efex helped to create a pleasing view of the park and even brought out some drama in the low cloud ceiling.

One of my favorite conversions features a classic car. This one was processed to be a super-grungy HDR image that was really over the top in color. Converting it to monochrome in Silver Efex helped to tone down the gaudiness and the combination made for one of my favorite classic car photos.

At the Northern Minnesota Steam Thresher Reunion, draft horses are featured in some of the antique farm equipment combinations. This team was harnessed and waiting to be led to their work assignment.

This image of a fisherman on the Platte River near Kearney Nebraska is from just a week ago. For this challenge, I decided to skip using Silver Efex and converted the image to black-and-white in Luminar Neo. When imported back into Lightroom, I cropped and adjusted the curves tool until I was happy with the resulting contrast.

Thanks to Anne for this challenge! Black-and-white photography brings me back to my high school days when I shot Verichrome Pan and Tri-X, processed my own negatives and printed my enlargements in my bedroom closet/dark room. If you are familiar with these two film types, you are of a certain age when there were Photomats everywhere and 24-hour photo processing was a thing, black-and-white or color.

You can check out these images in HD via my Flickr site here. Donna hosts the challenge next week, and if you’d like to join in the fun, check out how to get started here.

John Steiner

This week, Patti has selected a theme that focuses on monochrome photography. As a child of the 1960s, I was always enamored with color photography as it was newer and “modern”, but I’ve come to realize that I love the feel and drama of monochrome images. Patti includes reflections and shadows as options for the images featured. She writes, “This week, we’re challenging you to show us photos with reflections and/or shadows captured or processed in monochrome. Use your favorite post-processing software like Photoshop or Lightroom. Feel free to process your image in different shades of blue, green, brown, or gray. You can also shoot your image in a setting that’s predominantly one color–like a blue sea and sky, for example.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

My opening image features Mount Ranier as seen in Reflections Lake. There are two lakes almost side-by-side that sit right by the edge of the highway that runs through the park. There are lots of parking spaces nearby, but the attraction is strong and they are often fairly full, especially in peak season. Luckily both lakes are just a short walk from any of the spaces, so you don’t have to park twice to check out the best reflections from either lake.

On a recent cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines, the featured show is about a group of men who frequent a British Public House (Pub). Before the show started, I captured a cell phone image of the set. I used my Samsung S-20U to capture the image, then used Lightroom and Silver Efex-3 to do the conversion.

Just a week ago, we docked in Saint Thomas on the Norwegian Escape. It was our third visit to this U.S. Virgin Island. Normally this blue hour shot would have been left in color, but I decided for this challenge to do a black-and-white conversion. It came out better than I expected.

The next morning, we docked at Tortola. It was our first trip to this island. We had a great tour of the island with a tour guide who was not only informative but entertaining. Talented guides are not always easy to find. The reflections of the lights on the boats in the water created some interesting light patterns in the pre-dawn morning.

I often break the “rule” of not shooting into the light, because of the silhouette effect from back-lit images. I’ve shared this image before, and it was almost black-and-white even before I processed it. I added just a touch of sepia from Silver Efex-2. This image was captured in Mazatlan, Mexico on our first trip to visit the city on the occasion of our son’s wedding in 2006.

Silver Efex-2 helped me create this monochrome view of Alaska’s inner passage on a dramatic day. Captured from the Norwegian Pearl cruise ship, the clouds were just starting to break leaving streams of sunlight to highlight the ocean.

This silhouette in black-and-white misses the golden hues of the sky in the color version, but it more clearly defines the lighthouse on the shore. This black-and-white version is one of my all-time favorites. You can view all of the images in the gallery in HD on my Flickr site here.

I really enjoyed Patti’s challenge this week as it allowed me to share some brand new images captured in 2023 as well as some old favorites that I know I have shared in previous challenges over the years. Stay tuned for Amy’s challenge next week. If you’ve wondered about how to join in our challenges, click here.

John Steiner

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