Japanese peony: color or b&W

[DanK]

One of the biggest difficulties with flower photography is providing a perspective that isn't what someone walking by would see. Going close is one alternative. However, I recently saw a very interesting photo of a dahlia that used b&W to do that effectively, so I decided to start playing around with B&W more. I'd be interested in people's reactions to the two versions of a shot of a Japanese peony. Neither is quite ready for printing, but they are close enough for a comparison. The only additional edits I did on the B&W after conversion were an increase in texture and a slight boost in contrast, both in Lightroom.

Thanks for your thoughts about these.

[Manfred M]

In my view, the colour is superior to the B&W.

In general, this is a case where colour is such an important property of the subject that is loses too much when that aspect of the image is removed. I find that this is often true in bird and wildlife photography as well.

That being said, I have also seen some extremely effective images that break that "rule", but usually these were taken with a more unusual viewpoint that enhanced this level of abstraction. An example might be a closeup where the textures, highlights and shadows take away the importance of the image being a flower and already have an element of abstraction that compliments the monochrome approach.

[xpatUSA]

One of the biggest difficulties with flower photography is providing a perspective that isn't what someone walking by would see. Going close is one alternative. However, I recently saw a very interesting photo of a dahlia that used b&W to do that effectively, so I decided to start playing around with B&W more. I'd be interested in people's reactions to the two versions of a shot of a Japanese peony. Neither is quite ready for printing, but they are close enough for a comparison. The only additional edits I did on the B&W after conversion were an increase in texture and a slight boost in contrast, both in Lightroom.

Thanks for your thoughts about these.

It takes a good eye to envisage how a color pic will turn out in monochrome, Dan. Looks like you have it!

What conversion method?

You might find this of interest:

http://cadik.posvete.cz/color_to_gray_evaluation

Meanwhile I had to play with the color image, sorry.

In the GIMP, extraction of HSL or Lab lightness both looked similar to your monochrome but inverting the HSL was quite striking, it gave a back-lit appearance due to your dark background:

[pschlute]

Colour one for me too. The texture of the petals , especially at the bottom are revealed more in the b+w version, but it is not my favourite.

[DanK]

Thanks for the comments. The conversion was very simple: I made a virtual copy of the edited TIF file in Lightroom, switched th profile to B&W, and added a lot of texture and a bit of contrast. Because all of the areas that aren't white are variations on red, there was no need to do what I often do, which is to darken or lighten areas by color, much as one would have in the old days with colored filters.

[Shadowman]

I like the infrared version and I believe this one satisfies your providing the viewer with a different perspective.

[billtils]

FWIW, the mono version is a very nice B&W indeed, but the colour is the hands down winner in the overall attractiveness stakes.

[DanK]

Thanks, all. John, Ted's isn't infrared; it's just inverted. I don't know how he did this, but you can get much the same thing by taking the curves tool and inverting it, imposing a line that goes from top left to bottom right rather than vice versa. I may fool around with doing some of those. you can do it with color versions as well, but then you invert the color as well as the luminosity. It turns this flower shades of green.

[Shadowman]

Thanks, all. John, Ted's isn't infrared; it's just inverted. I don't know how he did this, but you can get much the same thing by taking the curves tool and inverting it, imposing a line that goes from top left to bottom right rather than vice versa. I may fool around with doing some of those. you can do it with color versions as well, but then you invert the color as well as the luminosity. It turns this flower shades of green.

Dan,

Didn't realize that was Ted's edit, I opened the first image in Lightbox and just scrolled back and forth between the images.

[DanK]

Just for fun, here is a simple inversion of the color version. Doing this inverts both luminosity and color.

[Shadowman]

I like it but would remove the stem.