Of late I have been fascinated by black and white (or near black and white) conversions from color images. Such conversions takes lots of time. It appears that often used technique for B&W conversion is channel mixing. How do we want to mix the RGB channels to get the required feel ? Thats what makes this B&W conversion very interesting.
Not all images look better than color versions – however hard we try to find that magic combination but some images do. Which ones are those ? I tried to find some patterns – prominent colors, intensity levels, patterns etc. Looks like it is not easy to guess. Some images are straight forward but not all. May be that comes with experience.
Unlike processing of color images b&w appears like a more involved art. We quickly become conscious about aesthetics and art unlike in color images processing where we have a tendency to follow some scientific rules. Reality seem to take back seat and also it is not very clear what is fair representation. I would think B&W is for portraying artistic visions, may not be for sharing natural history.
I have created a new gallery dedicated for black and white nature photography. I am yet to create a link from my galleries page. Hope to do that in the near future. Click the link below to see some of my color conversions to B&W. Looks like I will be updating this gallery often ! Here is the link -
Nature Photography in Black and White
- Ganesh H Shankar.