Two very different landscapes in black & white

Frequent visitors to my blog or flickr pages know I love both color and black & white photography.  Images with sharp contrast differences, especially those with muted or few colors, lend themselves well to conversion to black & white.  The problem is choosing the best way to do it, and how.

McCloyd Canyon, Cedar Mesa, Utah

Seasonal Waterfal, Redstone, Colorado

For these two photos, I used my favorite method of conversion - the channel mixer in Photoshop.  However, the process is very different for the two shots. 

Most of my alpine shots require little more than clicking the "monochrome" box and making slight adjustments to each channel (usually pulling down the blue to darken the sky, while giving slighter boosts to red and green to keep the whites very white).  With desert photos, however, this method initially results in a shot that leaves much to be desired.  Acting on a hunch a couple weeks ago, I made some adjustments that had a tremendous impact.  I lowered the red and blue channels by 50 each, while boosting the green channel by 70 or 80.  In addition to darkening the sky and the rocks, it brightened the desert plants.  Previously the plants would be somewhat indistinguishable from the surrounding red dirt and rocks.  I'm quite pleased with the results, and look forward to creating some striking desert landscapes in black & white.