Shades of grey

I'm not a great fan of 'rescuing' an otherwise dull shot by converting to black-and-white. When I say 'not a great fan' what I really mean, of course, is that I detest it. It's lazy, visually illiterate and more than a bit naff, frankly. IMHO, naturally.

Then again, some pictures just lend themselves to the mono treatment right from the off. Good black and white images need to be handled a little differently at the taking stage, so it pays to plan ahead. For example, here's one of mine as it appeared recently in What Mountain Bike:

Nikon D3, 17-35mm f/2.8, 1/400sec f/8 @ ISO200

The play of sunlight on the distant landscape and the glimpses of blue sky punched enough colour into the scene that I knew it would work as a mag-friendly full colour silhouette (it's rare that I get the chance to submit mono originals). But what I really wanted to do was work all those amazing sky tones into a gritty mono rendition. And here it is:

 

I'm still not sure which I prefer. But the second one is the shot I had in mind all along, really. Shame it's unlikely to find its way into print...

Comments

[mikemurano]

Hi seb rogers, may I have another email address because I have some complication with the one on your blog. I hope you can share some of your opinion on some of my photos.

[Seb Rogers]

Hi Mike,

YGM...

[mikemurano]

hi seb,
YGM....