"I know they'd never match my sweet imagination
Everything looks WORSE in black and white"
Paul Simon



Nothing like "those nice bright colors" to add cheer to this festive season. Famous lyrics, no doubt, but you know, sometimes color can be overrated. I don't know about you, but for me and my Nikon camera, CHROME can look pretty flippin' AWESOME in B&W!

Love the BandW shots myself and that last one just oozes of a perfect release. Good shots Doc!

CM

Very nice images.

Nice B&W Doc. I don't miss the Kodachrome, but I'd sure like to have that rangefinder Nikon. I think it is a S model, but am not sure. It definitely is a collector's item.

My first newspaper job they issued me a Nikon S2 which had the quick advance lever. They had cloth shutters so you had to be sure to have the lens cap on if you had the
camera sitting out in the sunlight. Like a magnifying glass, it could burn a hole in the shutter curtain if unprotected with a lens cap.

I still have my 1963 Nikon F, but haven't put film in it for years.

Nice pics - Now post the color ones and see if we like them better or less. As for the Paul Simon song - to me that song has the best opening line of any - "If I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all".

Maybe later. I was rather hoping others might add their B&W's to the pic parade.

Nothing captures texture and contrast in an image quite like good old monochrome.

Nothin' compared to your artwork, but here's a B&W of an image from this summer's catch at Swiftsure.

Must they all be fishing related? Most of my favorite B & W's are NFR, although I think I do have a few fishy ones.

Awesome black and white images are all about contrast. Unfortunately, much of today's camera technology is aimed at minimizing this natural contrast or high dynamic range. Minimizing in the sense of creating less separation between light and dark and aiming for more even exposure throughout the frame. HDR software, highlight and shadow reductions in programs like Iphoto, active D lighting (nikon), etc. To get black and white images to really pop, you need a lot of contrast.

Bradford Washburn was the master of black and white and he chose the Alaska Range as his favorite studio for a good reason. Granite and glaciers with heavy sun/shade lines and very little in the mid-range gray scale combined for a near perfect setting for this type of work.

A bit of post processing goes a long way with regard to B&W these days. In a lot of cases we have to try and recreate some of what the camera is working to eliminate for striking B&W. Tune down your exposure a bit and tune up your contrast and you'll like get an image that pops a little more than a perfectly exposed one in color.

You never know when you might stumble across a cool monochrome opportunity...



On the river





In the shade(s)






At the airport





In the hills.





On top of a hill.





Even at a concert.




Good one Doc. I do love a good black and white photo.

Coupla more de-colorized images from Buoy 10

Damn that picture of the sky/horizon is mesmorizing. Nice catch of a pricesless moment in time.

First of all, let me say that all you guys put my photography to shame. Sometimes, viewing this site is like having access to a library of great wilderness photography.

As for the topic at hand, I love the nostalgia invoked by black and white photos. Personally, as great as these fish pics look in black and white, when it comes to photos where the subject is strictly a fish, I prefer color, only because the colors are one of the defining characteristics of a memorable fish (although I must admit that photos of chrome salmon and steelhead look really cool - must be the contrast thing).

In my opinion, black and white really shines in pictures with multiple or general subjects, like the pics in Coley's post or the Buoy 10 shot of the horizon and sky. Ideally, photos of a beautiful or otherwise special place will invoke memories of things that aren't necessarily featured in the photographs themselves.

That top one is a winner, Brad!

Very helpful Coley.

I totally get what you're saying here. The human eye is really only mediocre when it comes to acuity and resolving fine detail.... lots of critters see way sharper than we do. But physiologically, the human eye ranks extremely high in contrast sensitivity. I completely agree with your statement about modern camera technology... usually there isn't enough contrast in the raw images produced by the camera, at least to my eye. The processor tends to spit out a "perfect" uniformly exposed image that minimizes shadows/highlights.

The first thing I do to almost every pic is to adjust exposure, but I typically try to be a bit cautious about not getting carried away with it in color pics because fine details can get lost in the shadows created. Rather than the Brightness/Contrast adjustment, my two favorite exposure adjustments in PhotoShop are "Offset" and "Gamma".... which I can usually tweak to optimize contrast without losing too much detail.

I can see where I can get a LOT bolder about how far to slide these bars when it comes to optimizing an image in B&W in order to achieve maximum "pop". The fine details in the image can be sacrificed in favor of the more dramatic effects gained by improved contrast.

Thanks!

Doc,

You might try adjusting with the Curves setting, especially if you are working with jpg images.

I do almost everything in RAW, then convert so use several of the adjustments available in RAW.

Sounds like you are on it Doc.

Levels vs. curves confuses me.

Found this helpful, but still have a hard time understanding.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/photoshop-curves.htm

While these aren't fishing shots at all they are some of my favorite b+w shots I've taken.

Awesome! The one of the fountain with the two birds is super cool. The lighter part of the body of the fountain/statute seems to glow.

BEFORE (Same exposure as color version)




AFTER (Doctored as per ColeyG's high-contrast recommendations)



I'd say that makes thing go POP!

So waddayathink?

OK... one more.

The synergistic power of high contrast and composition....

BEFORE:



.
.
.
.


AFTER:



WHOA! Talk about POP!.

Every scale, every spot, every ray, every ripple. Almost feels like you could touch it. Oh wait.... silly me, I was touching it!