Taking A Cue From Those Smarter Than Me....

[clarrieu]

I've been spending more time here the last few days, apparently drawn by my desire to open my mind and learn some new tricks.

Following are some taken at Fort Chronkite, just north of San Francisco. I snuck a pic of this couple, and thought it might be worth examining in black and white.

As always, your coments are most welcome. The only thing bigger than my ego is my need to improve.

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[boomboom]

I'm not the best guy to opine on B&W images as I tend to gravitate towards colors dripping with saturation but I would hazard to suggest trying a red filter setting to darken the sky and make it appear more natural. I don't know how to do that in post with JPEGs, but it's easy in RAW and Canon 20Ds and newer have the setting in camera. Maybe Katana could throw his two cents in, he is much, much better at B&W than I!

[clarrieu]

Based on your suggestion, I tried reworking both the original and the original conversion to B&W, but was unable to effect the sky at all. My recollection of the original photo is that it was taken mid to late morning on a hazy day and as you can tell from the color shot, because of diffusion (sun was up and to the left of the subject, to judge by the shadows), the sky is almost white anyway. The software I use does not appear to have the capability of pixel manipulation, which is what might be necessary to adjust the sky.

I do appreciate your suggestion. The sky was the weakest part of the black and white. It seems to hold up in the color originals.

[DRGSin]

Def a candidate for HDR. My approach wouldve been to favor exposure towards the sky and pull out the details from the underexposed portions. Very simple to do with Capture NX2. Need to shoot in RAW however.