Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: mokenny on November 29, 2012, 11:17:13 pm

Title: attempt at B&W conversion
Post by: mokenny on November 29, 2012, 11:17:13 pm

This was taken during the fall season in TN.
 Converted to B&W.
Suggestions welcome as to how to improve the picture.

Thanks

Mo Kenny

Title: Re: attempt at B&W conversion
Post by: Jim Pascoe on November 29, 2012, 11:43:17 pm

I love B&W in general and trees in particular - but for some reason I'm just wanting to see this picture in colour.  I also find it perhaps a little too symmetrical.
Lovely quality though.

Jim

Title: Re: attempt at B&W conversion
Post by: mokenny on November 30, 2012, 12:54:58 am

Yes the trees are almost symmetrical, it is a frame within a frame composition. Taken with a moderate telephoto lens to compress perspective.
This is the colored version.
Mo Kenny

Title: Re: attempt at B&W conversion
Post by: Jim Pascoe on November 30, 2012, 01:00:12 am

Yes, I prefer it in colour. 

Jim

Title: Re: attempt at B&W conversion
Post by: nemo295 on November 30, 2012, 12:45:26 pm

The B&W version looks flat to me. The color palette in the other one looks strange. To my eyes it has an odd combination of limited gamut and oversaturation. And both versions look oversharpened.

But I do like the composition.

Title: Re: attempt at B&W conversion
Post by: kencameron on November 30, 2012, 06:18:44 pm

The conversion heavily dials down the apparent contrast between the leaves and the trunks (aka "looks flat"). You could fix this in various ways - by using tone controls or the luminosity of the colors or restoring a bit of color in the leaves. If you want to retain texture in the leaves you could try different luminosities for yellow and green. Having said all that, the color version is pretty bichromatic anyway and looks really nice to me - symmetrical but not too symmetrical.