Many of us began our photography experience in the darkroom developing black and white images. BnW still holds an attraction for me as one can ramp up the contract. There is also the challenge of trying to match master photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams. While the photo below is not even close to either of these two masters, I post them here to illustrate how an ordinary image can be enhanced by moving from color to BnW.
Original Color
The old abandoned structure likely served as either a church or school house. Perhaps both. We came upon this building several years ago when we visited over 40 “ghost towns” in central and northeast Oregon. The cross indicates the building last served as a church.
A clear sky ends up with a rather bland image. If one were working as a photo journalist adding clouds is a no no.
Black and White Enhanced
To increase interest I added some high cirrus clouds, cropped the house on the right and increased the contrast. I pulled down the highlights and increase light on the shadows. All this was accomplished using Luminar AI, a powerful photo editing program.
Comments and questions are always welcome.
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In my college photo course images were all stored on film. I remember spending time in the dark room learning to burn in the under exposed areas of black and white photos with my hands.
Prior to the pandemic I had taken up black and white pencil drawing classes. My instructor, Jerry Winick, encourages the use of high contrast to make a drawing pop. You might be interested to see some of his amazing work here: https://jerry-winick.pixels.com
James,
Outstanding drawings by Jerry Winick. A former student of mine does still life drawings in color. I’ll try to locate his website.
Lowell