In this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, Patti asks us to compare black-and-white vs color in our images. She writes, “A few weeks ago, I visited a photography exhibit featuring the work of Joel Meyerowitz, an internationally-acclaimed street artist. Pairs of his photos–nearly identical–were set next to each other. One image was in black and white, and the other in color. This brought to mind a question: When is it best to use one vs the other? What’s the benefit of each one?” You can read her entire challenge post here.

I begin my response with a photo taken in 2003 by a Fujifilm point-and-shoot camera. About a decade after I took the picture, I processed it in Adobe Lightroom Classic as a learning tool and later in Silver-Efex for black-and-white editing. I leave it to you to decide which you like best, the low-key color photo or the black-and-white image.

We boarded our first Norwegian Cruise Line ship and sailed around the Hawaiian Islands in 2007. As we waited to depart, I captured this image from the upper decks of the Norwegian Wind cruise ship. Though the buildings are comparable in each version, Diamondhead is almost lost in the background of that dramatic black-and-white sky. Though I like the overall tone of the black-and-white, I prefer the color version. Feel free to differ in the comments.

We had a few beautiful sunsets on a short vacation in Ixtapa, Mexico, over 15 years ago. As we walked the beach, the yellow sun revealed itself as it dipped below a layer of clouds. I captured several versions of this scene as the sun disappeared into the Pacific Ocean, changing from yellow to shades of orange and red. As a neophyte to Silver Efex some years ago, I decided to see how a colorful sunset was transformed into black-and-white. My first choice is still the color image, but I thought the monochrome version held up nicely. What do you think?

A branch of the Maricopa County Library System is located just outside the main gates of the White Tank Mountain Regional Park in Waddell, Arizona. In 2013, the White Tank Library held a photo contest open only to amateur photographers. The contest aimed to create a gallery of black-and-white images to be hung in the library. This black-and-white image was selected for their gallery.

The color image was lackluster to me. When I composed the shot, I was struck by the foreground in the shadow of a mountain and the mountains in the background bathed in sunlight. Silver-Efex brought out the drama in the sky, and I discovered I could bring out the foreground to change the photograph’s tone completely. When I shared this photo on my Facebook feed, I remember one of my friends commenting, “That cactus seems to be pissed off about something!” Hmmmm, maybe he was right.

That’s all for my response this week. You can find the photographic metrics and view the images in a higher resolution in my Flickr album here. I may be slow in responding to comments from this post. We are on another cruise this week and next, so my Internet time is always limited by the many other things I can do while touring by cruise ship. Please excuse any tardiness of my responses.

Thanks to Tina for last week’s challenge. It allowed me to share a memory of a beloved pet. Next week, it’s Ann-Christine’s turn to host the challenge. Her challenge goes live on Saturday at 12:00 noon Eastern Standard Time in the United States. Follow her here to be sure you don’t miss her challenge post. If you’d like to join in but are unsure how to get started, click here.

John Steiner