Black and white workflow – Part 2

Few months back I wrote first part of this black and white workflow tutorial and I really did not expect that it would take me so long to come up with part two. So here it is:) As I said last time I prefer to have just simple grey files as a starting point.  It helps me to select only the strong photographs, which I really want to present.  I can imagine that everybody has their own system how to mark and rate photographs so just only briefly about my way.  All photographs, which I convert to black and white get red label (number 6 in Lightroom) and during the selection process I do rate individual pictures with stars and one star means that this picture is ready for further adjustments.

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Black and White Workflow – Part 1

Quite a lot of people, including my friends from Lightharmony, have been asking me how do I do mine Black and White conversions. So finally I have forced myself to start with this little tutorial about my workflow and black and white landscape photography in general. My attraction to black and white photography started sometime back in 2005, and as I mentioned in previous blog the main trigger for me was John Sexton’s book “Recollections”, where I was so impressed by all the different tones of gray, the precise compositions and the overall strong atmosphere of the photographs that I wanted to try it by myself. The whole transition process from color to black and white photography took me couple of years and approximately from early 2009 I have been seeing the world exclusively in tones of gray. I can say that this switch opens entirely a new world of landscape photography for me. Since, I am now focusing on composition and subject matter more than before and I am trying to keep my photographs as simple as possible. I have found that in some of my older color photographs colors play to big role and more or less are substituting for not very strong compositions. I also think that black and white photographs have kind of more abstract and mystery feel, which forces viewers to use fully their imagination:)

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