B&W vs Color!

VS

"Steal & Steam"



I recently posted the color image above on my blog, then was intrigued when a friend of mine asked me to try it out in B&W as well. Then I got busy and totally forgot all about it. I had a fabulous excuse of course. Something about 3 entire seasons of NCIS coming in from the library, spontaneously deciding to prime my kitchen walls, and relearning how to walk down the deck stairs without falling down them.

Well, never mind all that.

This week I decided that I would dig up one of my discarded photo projects, and then this image caught my eye. And I'm glad my friend Dave asked me to rework this in B&W to be frank. It wound up having a completely different feel, and still totally suits the subject matter. And to be honest, I was so caught up in the colors in the original shot that I forgot to explore the possibility that it would perform well as a monochromatic image as well.

There were some very specific things I tweaked in order for it to work for me though in processing. First, I had to play with the channels in B&W. The shadow areas were rather flat at first conversion. Pumping the blue channel was especially helpful in adding some contrast in those shadows. Also, I didn't go with an absolute B&W, I chose a silver effect from a Nik plug-in... suddenly the highlights had some definition which was very important to me. Finally, I played with the unsharp mask in Corel and the overall contrast. And was content with the result.

Now the question is... which one do we like best? Hmmmm.....

Have a great day, get out there and expand your photographic possibilities gang! And thanks for the ramble!