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Lens-Artists Challenge #265 – Black and White or Monochrome

The Red River of the North.

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.

Shafer Canyon at Canyonlands National Park.

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.

Seattle from the deck of a cruise ship.

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.

Glacier Bay, Alaska.

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.

A 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air.

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.

Draft horses.

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.

Platte River at Kearney Nebraska.

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

45 comments

  3. Beautiful b/w images!  Greetings from Zurich…happy travels.

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    Sent from my iPhone

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  4. Fantastic gallery John. The Seattle photo is truly a reminder of its beauty.We used to love traveling across the sound in our boat.Loved the view. Loved them all but like you, the car is a favorite. Thank you for always sharing the hows in your edits.

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  6. Once again, your post was worth waiting for John. Your photos are excellent examples of Black and White/Monochrome. My favorite is the image of the horses. That one took my breath away.

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    • I don’t yet have the eye for looking at a scene and thinking it would make a good black-and-white conversion and many times I am surprised at the results. I am always overjoyed when one works out well.

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  16. Gorgeous gallery, John! My absolute favourites are the horses – so beautifully processed. I must chime in about the car of course…but animals are even better – with real horsepowers;-D

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  19. Brilliant monos – every one! You’ve got some really good contrast on all your images, John. I especially like your first of the Red River and the horses are superb.

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