a bright sunny later winter day makes for a great black & white landscape

The sharp contrast offered by the scenery on a bright afternoon is perfect for converting from color to black and white.  The blindingly white snow and clouds and dark shadows in the pines give the range of contrast that works well when using the Channel Mixer in Photoshop to convert to monochrome.  This mountain landscape came out just as I hoped it would when I was shooting it.

Sensuous Snow Shapes

A day or two after a new snowfall, sun and gravity work their magic on the landscape, creating some fantastic shapes in the snow.

I brought the black slider up in Photoshop levels to improve the contrast of this photo.

Black and white winterscape

Hiking to the top of Huntsmans Ridge, these snow-covered trees were irresistible.  Though it looks like I was using a polarizing filter, all I had was a UV filter on the lens.  The sky was just that blue.  I converted to black and white using the Channel Mixer in Photoshop. 

This was one of my favorite photos of the day, and I had a lot of good ones.  Of over five hundred photos shot, I posted only ten to my flickr pages.  One of the many advantages of digital is the ability to compose the same scene many different ways, and choose the best once you get home and upload the photos to your computer.

I cropped up from the bottom on this photograph, mostly to improve the balance (rule of thirds), but also to remove some unnecessary foreground.

monochromatic landscape

A gray day with snow flurries is a perfect time for black and white landscape photography.

Walking along the riverbed, I found many pieces of driftwood that had interesting textures.  I grabbed this one and carried it to a bend in the river where the snow and ice formed interesting shapes among the rocks. 

After taking a few photos standing and kneeling, I held the camera a few inches off the ground, pointing it in the same direction and angle that I did in my other shots.  The wide angle causes the viewer's eye to start at the rocks and driftwood, and work upward into the rest of the landscape.

After I got home, I converted the image to black and white with the Channel Mixer in Photoshop.

A seasonal waterfall

I recently got a 4x neutral density filter, and wanted to try it out on the seasonal waterfall south of Redsone, Colorado.  The colors this time of year are rather muted, so I may be converting all of my photos to black and white with the channel mixer in Photoshop.