black and white photography

[dunlin]

Hi all,
Ive allways liked black and white photography but only recently started trying it myself.
The waterfall picture was taken at keld in north yorkshire. The original was in colour and converted to b+w using the gradient tool in photoshop 7.
I also lightened the shadows at the side of the waterfall using the dodge tool then a tiny amount of unsharp mask was applied to the foreground rocks.

I would welcome any advice you can give on improving the picture.
How would you have done it better?
How do you convert to b+w?
Advice on composition.
I have broad shoulders so be as brutal as you like.
I would be interested in knowing how you convert to b+w

Best regards mark....

[coasty]

Well from a totally non expert eye on aesthetics alone I really like it. I have always liked black and white I think you can capture mood so well,,,,

[Geoff F]

Not much wrong with that photo. Previously, I did say that using the Gradient Tool isn't easy but some professionals get excellent results. You certainly appear to have aquired the knack.

Not sure but just as an experiment, try cropping a little bit from the foreground and the right hand edge. Or just crop to 4 x 5 format to loose some of the foreground stones.

May not work but I wonder if the foreground stones are reducing the waterfall impact. You won't know until you try.

[big bill]

Nice image well done on conversion have you tried using the Channel mixer in photoshop for conversion it is easy to use ,you have red breen and blue channel and adjust independantly making numbers total up to 100 or as near as possible.
Your image is fine I would not crop anything from the foreground as the stones lead yopu into the pic nicely captured and converted well done

[RogerTheCat]

Nice image. I love balck and white photography, I feel that lack of colour concentrates your eye on the detail if that makes any sense

[dunlin]

Thanks for the encouraging comments there much appreciated.

Big bill, ive been using the channels palet for some time now, its a great way to see how the picture is going to look in b+w.

Geoff f, ive got you to thank for the suggestion on using the gradient tool, i had never heard of it before reading your post and i find it works great on some pictures but really depends on what colours are in the original image.

thanks to all who posted replies and if you can think of any more ways of controlling the way you convert to b+w, id like to try them out.

many thanks regards mark.....

[Geoff F]

Remember, you can still use a Hue & Saturation Adjustment Layer with the Gradient Tool to alter your original image colours to give a better black and while effect. Just the same as when using the Channel Mixer method.

It doesn't always work but sometimes changing green to red or blue to magenta etc makes a considerable improvement. Particularly if one colour is too dominent. Too much leaves or grass, or the wrong shade of sky etc.

Just experiment by inserting the adjustment layer on top of the original colour image then, after converting to monochrome, slide the Hue setting around to see if it helps. With most software you can set it to affect all shades or just one colour, ie blues or greens.

The great advantage with adjustment layers is that alterations aren't permanent and you can show or hide the effect simply with one click. If you don't like the result the layer can be deleted without affecting anything else.

I find the best thing with digital editing is that there are so many ways of achieving results.