"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!

OK.... one more.

Been organizing literally hundreds of pics from three different cameras for days and just ran into this jaw dropper that I simply had to share.

Bueno!

You have seen the light. Pun intended. Good stuff Doc.

I'll play...








And one that Todd sent me a while back that I put a slight tweak on. Ryley, is this your pic?

OK, I'll try a few. I like to shoot some fairly mono-chromatic color images and silhouttes, which convert pretty well to B&W using the B&W setting in the file menu in photoshop. Usually the contrast needs to be increased somewhat and the black level increase by using the slider.

I did these pretty quickly so they may not be perfect, but I thought I'd take Doc's challenge and post some from Icy Bay north of Yakutat.

Bridge in the fog is MONEY, Twitch!

Awesome Sebastes! Gorgeous.

All dandy, but Mt. St Elias reflection, the coho headshot, and the camp fire

Whoops, I accidentally deleted the campfire shot while editing,

Trying again

My attempts

+1

The nod goes to St Elias for me.

Coley and Sebastes...

What do you guys have to say about the aberration/artifact commonly referred to as "posterization"?

Read a little bit about it in that link you posted for "curves". After seeing the photo example of what posterization actually looks like, I know exactly what they mean.

Now that I have this new HD monitor at the office, I see this "posterization" artifact on a lot of the pics, especially over broad monotone fields like open sky. (Doug's Mt St Elias and Campfire, kwikfix's Angler Looking Skyward, several of Twitch's River in the Fog shots, Coley's Mountaintop shots)

I can look at these same pics on my home computer and do NOT see the same effect. Is this just an artifact of the HD screen or is my old monitor just too dumb to pick it up? Curious to know if any of you have seen the "posterization" effect in an actual printed version of these same pics?

If we're not restricted to fishing photos - here's a few of my favorite B&W's from a trip to Prague a few years ago.

I have noticed the same thing in viewing the one image over a range of monitors or displays. Colors will manifest differently as well as monitors are often calibrated different from one another, if at all.

My first guess is that it is that the posterization you are seeing is more of a factor of the tonal range or some characteristic of your monitor rather than the image it is trying to display. In not knowing much about how monitors and displays work, I suspect that they have some sort of range limit or built in tonal compression of sorts as a matter of efficiency or expense saving, but that is a wild guess really. It could also be a factor of dot pitch.

With regard to differences between computer based viewing and printing, bear in mind that monitors can only display 72 or 96 pixels per inch where as you would need to start at about 300dpi for a decent print.

I have never noticed or had a problem with posterization in any of my prints, but then I don't tend to manipulate curves much if at all and I always print at maximum resolution for the desired print size.

I have however had a problem when creating graphics and effects that feature some sort of a faded appearance or graduated color effect. I used to use a program called Fireworks for web based and printing image manipulation and if I exported an image at a fairly low resolution I would get fairly obvious posterization, particularly in printed form. Very similar to what is shown here:

I admit that I *FAIL* in the picture editing department. So for you experts out there, is there anyway to fix this sumbitch?

Here are a few other Icy Bay shots most by Sebastes.





[

Now that was just uncool NoPhish!

Funnier'n'hell, yes.... but definitely uncool.

Bucket's one helluva guy.... an assessment that is echoed by many. I still gotta find a way to get that dude in my boat one of these days.

For some reason a chunk of these photos weren't loading for me earlier.

Twitch, coupla dandy's in that batch dude!

The Prague reflections is pretty stinkin cool as well.

NOFISH, that is pretty terrifying. As for how to fix it, tell bucket to pull his bottom lip over his head and swallow real hard.

Smokes alive SeaDNA.... you've got serious shutter skills!

Doc,

I'm not a really technical photographer, I have always joked that it is a wonder that I could get film inside a camera, now it is what side of the media card do I stick in this thingy door?

Coley hits it pretty well. Monitors, Calibration,over-use of adjustment tools can all effect what you see.

This link will give you an idea about posterization.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/posterization.htm

Keep in mind that what we upload on sites like PP are really low resolution in comparison to the camera output and even more so between using RAW files and 16 bit instead of jpg and 8 bit.

16 bit gives smoother looking files, but does is not available to my knowledge in jpg format.

If you made a legal size paper print of a file as downloaded from your camera on photo paper, it will look much better than a 72ppi image prepared for PP.

Some processing methods are less/more destructive than others.

It is less destructive to use curves, than brightness/contrast on a jpg image.

You want to avoid the jaggies in levels as much as possible.

That is the advantage of shooting and adjusting RAW images over jpg shot files. In actuality, it is pretty hard to see the difference in a printed piece,but RAW gives you much more control without destructing the image.

Take the same jpg image and compare the results using Curves versus
Brightness/Contrast.

I believe you should see no or fewer spikes in the levels after adjusting in curves than brightness/contrast or some of the other adjustment choices, especially the automated ones.


Hope this helps.

BTW,

SEA-DNA looks like he really has the B&W conversion thing right on as well as having nice images.

This has turned out to be a very nice thread.

A few parting shots and I will tap out.

A couple of these were shot in B&W, a few I have just wondered how they would look.




Battle scarred Kasilof Chinark






Glory hole above the Makaroa river, New Zealand.





NW Fork of the Tokositna below Peaks 11,520, 11,530 and Mount Hunter, AK Range. (should see some posterization in this one as it is a low res scan from slide film)







Mount Shuksan from Table Mountain, North Cascades, WA







Hub cap bus reflection, Christchurch, New Zealand.







Mount Foraker Massif from 17,200' on Denali's West Buttress






Flying rat on the way back to the docks, Seward, AK








Dirt jumping at the Whistler Mountain bike park, Whistler, BC








My back yard, the Talkeetna river joins the Big Susitna.





Wind swept tree on Stony Peak, Akaroa, New Zealand.







Back to the land of color for me, I find it much more...Grand!

Awesome shots coley.

Just a few more of my favorite shots in B&W - too bad I suck at fish shots....


One more shot from Prague (near the Charles Bridge)



The Eye of London


and my favorite of all - Twin towers in Malaysia

the Malaysian twin towers..... homie gots skillz

wow! some amazing shots here.

Nice thread Doc, not quite up to par but a few for fun anyways.

I think my Vet could do it...

Lower Hoh pic i like
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[img:left][/img]

Ring out the old year and reel in the new!

Beauty!

NoFish,

Dam near impossible. Highlight are so blown out nothing really works. I assume you put this up as a joke, but I tried to adjust it.

Sebastes, you are a saint. But alas, even THAT'S not enough.

I worked on it for awhile. The contrast was pretty blown out but here's what I did.

Start with the original


Playing with the gamma adjustments reveals some features in the image that were washed out with the original settings.


Further adjustments and some image enhancement reveals more hidden features


Applying a filter to sharpen the details shows even more detail.


Applying a Fourier transform, some low pass filtering and in inverse transform begins to show the missing components of the image


A little smoothing and contrast adjustment and it's all fixed up.


You're welcome.

Wow! That's perfect!

Brilliant!

I knew it.

DID SOMEONE SAY CODA?

A good chuckle for today. Thanks seaDNA.

Nicely done seaDNA

All in good fun guys, Bucket knows I have his back

Spotlight on Team RWB....

Nice shot Mooch!

Well now it is just sad. Kodak is going to file Chapter 11 and likely full bankruptcy shortly. Bad decisions / technology advances with a head in the sand approach got them. Sad as they have been around 130 years I think.

seaDNA

Saw Jim a couple of days ago, still looks the same.

Sometimes the light is close to b&w even if shot in color, as this image of Rev. Tarpones playing a Pink on the lower Snohomish.

That picture reminds me of a few nightmares I have had after spending days wading around snaggle toothed chum zombies.

A few of my favorites.....











Both of these fish were caught by Mrs. CanyonMan.....but graciously held up by Mr. CanyonMan. Like her husband, she tends to only catch big fish.....

That was back before Toff. Back when those RVRFSTR's were gimmicks. Someone had to use that crap.

I think that photo found it's way in to one or two copies of STS.

The full sized color version kicks ass as a screen saver and/or background image on 27" monitor.