My first attempt at B+W

[Rob Ekins]

Hi all,

My first attempt at converting to B+W. This little guy was having a dance on the steps of the Napean dam.

All comments welcome.


Original.




Post.





Cannon EOS 550D
Cannon EFS 55-250 79mm
f4.5
1/800
ISO 800

Original RAW file is here


Robbie.

[Mike Buckley]

Very nice conversion, Robbie. The composition doesn't work for me, but congratulations on your first black-and-white!

[Donald]

I agree with Mike, Robbie. It's a good conversion. How did you do it?

I accept that you don't have to (definitely shouldn't) always follow the 'rules', but in this one I think, given he is moving and facing right to left, that the composition would have been strengthened if he had been going into more space than he was coming from; i.e. more space in front of him than behind.

[Colin Southern]

Nice work.

By the way, it's "Canon" - not "Cannon" (I'd hate for you to shoot the chap with a cannon!).

[Zora]

I like the conversion. One oberservation: it's really a nice moment you've caught with his left foot not quite touching the ground. In the colour shot you can see the shadow his foot is casting but in the coversion that lovely brief moment is gone. If it were up to me I'd want that shadow back. It's such a tricky thing to capture...

Roz

[davidedric]

Yes, nice conversion. Following Roz's comment, you obviously decided to change the crop as well as convert. I wonder why?

[Colin Southern]

I could be wrong, but I suspect the conversion is just a straight desaturation.

[Rob Ekins]

Thank for your input folks and apologies for the late response, we went "Bush" for a few days, no phones, no net.. but oodles of kids, oldies, dogs and laughs.

Mike,
"Very nice" I'll take that thank you!


Donald,
Composition wise, I did like that I caught him dancing down the steps and I thought the room behind him would emphasise that. Having said that, I am sticking to my new years resolution to shoot in manual and I got what I got...

Conversion wise, I tried the straight desaturation as mentioned by Colin but I felt it left the image looking pretty flat.

1) I did nothing in RAW.
2) Once in CS6 I sharpened the BG image.
3) Using adjustment layers I selectively desaturated the blues and greens in the shirt, then the flesh tones on the face and then the leaves, trying not to loose the texture on the stone work behind.
4) I then used the B+W adjustment layer when I was happy that all of the elements worked in B+W
5) Sharpen again.
6) Reduce size and sharpen again.

There were a lot of sliders going back and forth and history steps getting deleted but I really wanted to enhance the texture of the stone yet not have them dominating the image, as well as not killing the flesh tones.


Colin,
My apologies for the spelling error, on a good day I can spell EOS

Roz,
Thank you very much for pointing that out, it was one of the aspects of the image that I really liked initially as well but I must admit I got caught up in cropping to 16-9 and lost that moment. I was trying to loose some of the stones up top and have just one leading line indicating where he came from.

Dave,
Thanks for the compliment, see above.



Thank you every one for your input I really appreciate the insight you bring and willingness to share.



Robbie.