Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Ed Blagden on December 09, 2013, 06:50:27 am
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Hi
I have done almost all my work in colour up to now, apart from portraits, but I am now starting to look at B&W. I'm a bit of a novice at conversions but have worked on a few of my images and I am putting them up here to see what you guys think. I attach some representatives below (a couple of which have already been posted here in colour), and if you want to see a few more then I have put a set of 10 on my flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ed-blagden/sets/72157638506772126/).
Thanks,
Ed
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Nice !
Good to see you risked to abandon the color, though the color version were beautiful as well.
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Nice !
Good to see you risked to abandon the color, though the color version were beautiful as well.
I agree.
These conversions all look quite satisfying to me. The monkey portrait is especially fine in BW.
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The monkey is superb but I also like the first image very much. It has that timeless mood that 's so fond of and I don't miss colors there.
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The monkey is superb but I also like the first image very much. It has that timeless mood that 's so fond of and I don't miss colors there.
The monkey is superb and the first image is also a winner!
Tony Jay
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The monkey is superb but I also like the first image very much. It has that timeless mood that 's so fond of and I don't miss colors there.
Thanks to you all. I also like the first one, it is part of a set of 4 (you can see the other 3 in my Flickr set here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ed-blagden/sets/72157638506772126/)). I posted the colour versions on this forum (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=83379.msg673590#msg673590) a while back. Lots of fun playing with the colour channel sliders to bring out the masai blankets.
Here are some more I have worked on today.
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Hi Ed, I've been coming back to these again and again. Here's my conclusion: I loved the color version of #1, and I think the B&W version is very good. My only down would be the lack of graduated mid-tones in the figures and the foreground. I think if it were mine I'd drop a gradient, or a well feathered selection in the lower half of the picture and play with the contrast. The tones in the hills are fine, and they'd take care of themselves during that process, but the tonal transitions in the foreground seem too abrupt to me (emphasis on "to me.")
The monkey is superb, and we've already talked about the tree. It's a different picture in B&W, but I think it's as good as the color version.
Love the elephant. The kid's adorable. With the bird on the right the whole thing becomes sort of a street shot in the veldt.
The additional four are just as good. Love the jumping kid.
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Hi Ed, I've been coming back to these again and again. Here's my conclusion: I loved the color version of #1, and I think the B&W version is very good. My only down would be the lack of graduated mid-tones in the figures and the foreground. I think if it were mine I'd drop a gradient, or a well feathered selection in the lower half of the picture and play with the contrast. The tones in the hills are fine, and they'd take care of themselves during that process, but the tonal transitions in the foreground seem too abrupt to me (emphasis on "to me.")
The monkey is superb, and we've already talked about the tree. It's a different picture in B&W, but I think it's as good as the color version.
Love the elephant. The kid's adorable. With the bird on the right the whole thing becomes sort of a street shot in the veldt.
The additional four are just as good. Love the jumping kid.
Thanks Russ.
As I said, I am still a bit of a novice in BW processing and I have noticed that you can go a bit crazy with the contrast controls in the Basic panel in LR and get away with it most of the time. But I think you may be right about the first image (the Masai guys getting ready to dance for the tourists) and I will have a go at toning it down.
Glad you like the elephant and calf. I am very fond of that one. When you say it is a street shot in the veldt you have got it just right. This is exactly how I approach photographing animals, especially elephants. With elephants, they are almost human and if you wait a while and pay attention something special is bound to happen. It is a kind of f8 and be there with these creatures.
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Hi Ed, I've been coming back to these again and again. Here's my conclusion: I loved the color version of #1, and I think the B&W version is very good. My only down would be the lack of graduated mid-tones in the figures and the foreground. I think if it were mine I'd drop a gradient, or a well feathered selection in the lower half of the picture and play with the contrast. The tones in the hills are fine, and they'd take care of themselves during that process, but the tonal transitions in the foreground seem too abrupt to me (emphasis on "to me.")
Hi Russ,
I took your advice - does this look better to your eyes?
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Well, to me it does because I see mid-tones that weren't there before. But that's just one opinion. It would be nice to hear from some other viewers.
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Ditto...last version is way better. ;)
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Love the elephant. The kid's adorable. With the bird on the right the whole thing becomes sort of a street shot in the veldt.
This is true, a very good image.
During our 'experience' in Kenya, the guy driving the truck out of Kitchwa Tembo (spelling?) wouldn't let the model and myself off the vehicle for safety reasons. As a result, the shoot was seriously compromised. The only time we had any luck was in the compound at Buffalo Lodge, a flight away.
The shoot was seriously compromised anyway: the client - a new guy running the shoot - lost his senses and insisted on his local town's models (why?) instead of the usual best out of London. He lost his mind, and for me it was my last shoot with the client. Clients are never mistaken, don't you know. I get sick of carrying other people's cans. Pun intended, and if you know the client, makes perfect literal sense.
Rob C
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Ditto...last version is way better. ;)
Agreed. I like the subtle toning, too.
Jeremy
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Wonderful images ~! Superbly caught --
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Thanks Ed. Beautiful.
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Wonderful images ~! Superbly caught --
Thanks - I particularly appreciate that coming from an "old school" Black and White film guy. I never learned it, but I really get the craft that used to be needed to make such images.
I won't post any more images on this thread but will put up a Flickr link when I am done with this particular series. This is the first time I have tried to do a mass conversion of a series of photos into B&W and I'm enjoying the learning process and the results. In the past when I made B&W photos I was thinking B&W right from capture, mainly portraits and the odd abstract. This is the first time I have taken a series of shots intended for colour rendition and taken them over to B&W without having prior vision of what the result would be like.
As a confirmed autodidact I thought I would share some of the things I am learning as I go along:
- Some images don't work in B&W. A scene which looks very colourful to the eye, with yellow dried grass, green foliage, maybe a few animals, turns out to be all slightly different shades of orange when converted to B&W. If there is not enough luminance or focus contrast in the scene then it is basically impossible to create contrast through the colour channels in that kind of scene without making all kinds of dreadful artefacts.
- For the images which do work, they can take a lot more contrast than the colour versions, indeed they need it. I don't mean amping up the contrast slider alone, you need to be more aggressive with black point, white point, highlights and shadows, and the clarity slider.
- Using the blue channel to darken the sky works but is dangerous. Go too far and you make halos. Best to be used in conjunction with a grad filter.
- Not only do all human racial groups have the same skin colour (basically orange, just different luminosities and saturations) but it turns out that we share the same skin colour with Monkeys and Elephants. I find that very cool.
- Split toning. Oh yes. I personally like Highlights 20, Shadows 240, with saturation set around 10 on both and the balance seasoned to taste but veering towards warm. Subtle and almost imperceptible, but it lifts an image.
- Grain. Wow. Deals with noise in the shadows by making the whole image a bit noisy, and gives the image a more organic look. Take out colour and skin (especially young people) can look too smooth and "digital". Same goes for open sky. Add a sprinkle of grain and everything looks just right. Personally I like to set it at 20 and leave the other sliders on default. No doubt I shall find other settings which work well on specific images.
- Vignettes. I always apply lens corrections as my first PP adjustment, which removes any vignetting. But every single image I have worked on in this series needs a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) vignette, so I have to put it back in the Effects panes, which I find kind of funny.
Anyway, that's my take on B&W post processing so far. As you can tell I'm enjoying the journey.
Regards
Ed
ps A note of thanks to Jeremy (Kikashi). He made a comment on some other thread (not mine) about a B&W picture of a Leopard, along the lines of why bother to render such a beautifully coloured animal in B&W. And so I thought to myself why not, lets have a go and see what happens.
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Thnx for sharing