PAD 109 - Reflected Sky

[Mike Farley]

Day 109 and a trip to Greenwich, home of astronomy. This is the roof of the Planetarium reflecting the overcast sky.

Panasonic DMC-G3
Lumix G Vario 14-45
Focal length 14 mm (28 mm @ 35 mm equivalent)
1/400 sec
f/8
ISO 160

Monochrome conversion in Silver Efex Pro 2.

[davidc]

The sky suits the mono conversion, silver efex pro is definitely good at that!

[Mike Farley]

The sky suits the mono conversion, silver efex pro is definitely good at that!

Given your previous comments about how you like contrasty black and white, I thought that you might appreciate this one.

[davidc]

Well it's pretty much true! Black & white images are stronger where there is strong contrast between subject and background otherwise it's easy for a mono conversion to just look uniform across the scene and hide the image the photographer is trying to convey. Without colour cues the brain needs something else to pick the subject out of the image which is why so many mono conversions can look bland/boring.

[Mike Farley]

While contrasty mono can have a gritty appeal, black and white is also good for emphasising textures and patterns which would not be so obvious in colour.

[davidc]

True but simply converting to mono doesn't in-and-of-itself reveal the hidden texture - it removes the colour "distraction" but without adequate contrast and tonal range your textures and patterns will still end up flat and boring. Even more so than colour because by taking out the colour information you are leaving the viewer only luminous contrast.

There's definitely a time and a place for mega contrasty images though, I'm not advocating whacking every slider to the right! But many mono image seen at the club IMO suffer from a lack of contrast.

[Mike Farley]

Contrast has its place and can enhance both colour and mono, although black and white images usually can take a bit more and as you say frequently needs it. It has to suit the subject and there are no hard and fast rules. I once saw a presentation where the speaker said that a good monochrome image has to have a range of tones from black to white. That's a useful guideline, but not an absolute.

One of the benefits to me of Silver Efex Pro 2, as I have said before, is its Structure function which is a contrast control and it really does help bring out patterns and textures. Something similar can be obtained with Adobe's Clarity control in ACR processing, which operates on mid tone contrast, although SEP2's Structure has more options and is more flexible.