Fargo, North Dakota.

This week Anne Sandler asks us to look at our photos with an eye for shade and texture and focus on the impact of black and white photography in our photo work. She writes about black and white photography, “I don’t process a lot of it, but when I do I enjoy the texture and depth it gives a scene. It reaches a place in your soul that color can’t. Some images cry out for black and white.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

Similar to Anne, I don’t do many black-and-white conversions, but there are times when I can see an image has the potential for stripping the color away. Some years ago, I discovered Silver Efex 2 which is part of the Nik Collection, now from DxO software. Just recently they released a new version of the collection that includes Silver Efex 3. This challenge was all I needed to spring for the upgrade fee to the new version.

My opening photo features an image captured at Orchard Glen Park in Fargo, North Dakota. The park is on the state line between North Dakota and Minnesota. There is a clearing on the river bank near a bend in the river that is a great place for photography any time of the year.

Most of my processing for black and white starts with Lightroom for basic tweaks like cropping and making global settings changes like applying the correct lens profile, adjusting clarity and contrast. Lightroom is my image catalog as well and it helps me keep track of my photo library.

This winter view of the Red River was captured from the Minnesota side. Before sending the image to Silver Efex 3, I used Lightroom to remove a cell phone tower that was a distraction in the background. Then I sent it to Silver Efex for black and white processing.

The program offers about 50 preset images. When I first see the image in black and white, I get a first impression of where I’d like to start in a conversion. The presets are divided into types and with a little practice, I’ve been able to pick a category of these pre-finished settings to use as a starting point.

Sometimes I second-guess myself and discover that the preset I thought I would like turned out to be what I expected. From there, I can go back to the top of the preset images that are displayed in a column on the left. The top image preset is always the conversion directly from Lightroom. Selecting it again allows a “do-over”.

The image above features a drone shot of the High Line Bridge at Valley City, North Dakota. This trestle bridge is one of the longest and tallest active trestles in the United States. This image, like all the rest in my challenge were captured in North Dakota.

Once I find a preset to start with, then I use the column of tools on the right to modify the preset as I see fit. Most often, I add some structure or change the brightness or contrast globally.

One of my favorites in black and white is a photo I captured in the summer of 2013. At Fargo, a train of brand new oil tanker cars were sitting on a siding awaiting transfer to the Bakken Oil Field in western North Dakota. This image, reprocessed this morning with Silver Efex 3 is probably the fourth time I’ve tweaked the original color image using a different preset starting point.

A few years ago in Bismarck, North Dakota, a pioneer days event brought me out to look for photo opportunities. The gentleman in the image above was giving demonstrations of blacksmithing techniques. This photo allowed me to use the program’s control points to work on a specific area of the image.

The shot was diminished by the very busy background. I should have used a wider lens opening to blur the background to reduce the “clutter”. In Silver Efex, I chose one of the low-key presets that brought the image to look very under-exposed. I applied a control point around his face and increased the exposure in that area only to bring his face out of the shadows. Control points are circular and I discovered that I needed to add another control point under his chin to bring up the exposure around his neck and upper chest area to balance out the exposure around his face.

In Anne’s post, I noticed some beautiful black-and-white flower conversions. I admit to not having considered that floral images losing their colors would be something to be considered. Anne’s examples showed me how wrong I was about this attitude. For this challenge, I attempted to find a suitable flower that would convert nicely to monochrome. Most of the floral images I tried to convert didn’t fare well in the conversion, mostly because the solid color tones in the flower turned to some shade of gray with little distinction.

One of the flowers that did convert well, in my opinion, was this blossom captured in the Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis. The mostly white flower converted nicely with the brightly lit blossom and the lighter green of the stem seemed to fit. I used a lower key exposure setting than in the color photo and then darkened the background shadows to highlight the foreground components. In the future, I’ll be looking for more flowers that will convert well to black-and-white.

I conclude this post with another image of the Red River, this view from Lindenwood Park in Fargo. Adding structure and contrast to the image in Silver Efex brought out the details in the sky. The structure control also improved the definition and clarity of the trees on the opposite bank.

As always, I invite you to click on any image above to view it in 2K HD from my gallery on Flickr. From there, you can click on the right or left arrows beside the photo to move from one photo in the gallery to the next. I made a total of eleven conversions for this challenge-response, and all of them are posted in my Flickr gallery for your review and, I hope, your approval.

Thanks again to Anne for allowing me to indulge myself in some more black and white work.

John Steiner

This week’s photo challenge is my choice. Tina’s comment on the subject is simply, “This week it’s all up to you – you get to choose your subject and to share whatever it is about it that you find interesting.” You can read her entire challenge post and view her impressionistic images here.

Since working with my first images as black-and-white prints in high school photography class (over 50 years ago now,) I have appreciated monochrome photography. For my challenge-response, I choose black-and-white photography. I hope you enjoy a few of my favorite monochrome images.

My opening photo features a view of the White Tank Mountains near our home in Buckeye, Arizona. It was one of three images of mine that was selected to be mounted and displayed in the White Tank Mountain Nature Center as the outcome of a black-and-white photo contest sponsored by the park conservators.

Wet streets always make interesting reflective surfaces. On an otherwise dry evening, a 10-minute rain shower over Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee caused us to run into a doorway to keep dry.

The image above is a panorama featuring the iconic Mittens and Merrick’s Butte in Monument Valley. In northeastern Arizona in the Navajo Nation, Monument Valley was host to seven motion pictures directed by John Ford. Ford’s first movie in Monument Valley, released in 1939, was Stagecoach, followed by My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Searchers (1956), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). The first three of this stellar movie list were filmed in black-and-white.

I don’t do a lot of portrait photography, but at a family gathering a few years ago, I found a shady tree with a pleasing background, used a fill flash, and captured a few portraits. This one was the only black-and-white conversion I made, the inspiration came from the fact that both ladies were wearing black-and-white print dresses.

Canyonlands National Park in Utah features many canyon overlooks, but if I were to pick a favorite, it would be Shafer Canyon. The road in the valley creates a leading line that allows the viewer’s eyes to wander through the image.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, Sprague Lake on a chilly November day became the subject of a black-and-white conversion partly because of the unusual cloud formation that seemed to begin over those two peaks on the left.

My final image features a diorama at the Denver Nature and Science Museum. For those interested in viewing taxidermy specimens in a recreated natural environment, the museum is a treasure with many dioramas that make for great photography (if you can avoid catching the reflections off the protective glass display fronts.)

Thanks again to Tina for letting us choose our own subjects this week. I’m already looking for next week’s images in the Alphabet Challenge, the Letter ‘A’.

John Steiner

Last week, I had some time to catch up on my reading. I selected one of my favorite photo magazines, Outdoor Photography. The August 2014 issue features tips and techniques for black-and-white photography. One particular article by Rick Sheremeta provided me with the focus for this week’s blog post. The article is titled B&W In Harsh Light.

Rick’s focus is on those photos you take in mid-day, high contrast lighting and lack of clouds make for less-than-inspiring color photos. However Rick’s tutorial shows how these high contrast photos can be enhanced by converting them to black-and-white. I must say, Rick provided me the inspiration to review my library of photos looking for likely candidates to convert to black-and-white. For this exercise in photo processing, I chose some of the previously posted color photos. I think in almost all cases, I improved upon the color original by emphasizing the contrast of light and shadow in each image.

The photo above is of Shafer Canyon in Canyonlands National Park near Moab, Utah. The partly cloudy day helped to reduce the high contrast in the color shot, but the harsh mid-day light flattens the detail in the valley. Using some of the techniques I learned with Lightroom in the article, I converted the image to black-and-white. First using one of the filter presets and then exploring several adjustment options. My original conversion made a better image in black-and-white, but I still didn’t like the sky. The image converted to a washed-out sky that demanded special attention. I’d never used dodging and burning techniques in Lightroom before, however a quick Google search for a Lightroom tutorial on dodging and burning left me wondering why I haven’t learned to use the Lightroom brush tool before this week. It only took a few moments to learn to manipulate the dodging-burning brush function. Here is the final image in black-and-white.

Rick’s article also demonstrates images converted to black-and-white in some other dedicated photo programs. Most have features more sophisticated than Lightroom’s conversion tools, but for the occasional conversion, I will probably stick with Lightroom. I will, however, look to experimenting more in black-and-white photography. The lack of color adds drama and provides a different perspective on my landscapes. I present for your color saturated eyes a gallery of images in black-and-white. These are the results of my first experiments, constructive criticism is always welcome. To enlarge an image in the gallery, click on it and you can then scroll through larger image views.

To see the color versions of these images and others from the same locations, check out the previous blog posts linked below.

Arches

Sedona

Canyonlands

Bryce Canyon

John Steiner