Friday, March 29, 2013

Workshop Preparation – Thinking in Black & White


One of things I try to teach in my workshops is how to add drama to your landscape images. Much of this centers on “in-camera” exposure, composition and lighting but sometimes it’s just easier to do something different in your “post processing” such as turning a nicely saturated image to black & white in Lightroom 3.



Now I’ll be the first to admit that I prefer using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro to create my black & white images but not everyone can afford all the latest & greatest plug-ins and Lightroom 3 does a superb job itself (with a little help from you of course). The secret is to play around with the contrast and clarity settings as well as the color sliders until you achieve the look you want. The key to a well balanced black & white image is to have some bright whites and dark blacks as well as many different shades of gray.



Fortress Cliff




Canyon Vista – Palo Duro Canyon near Claude, Texas
Copyright 2010 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on aperture (Av) priority using an EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens tripod mounted. The exposure was taken at 30mm, f/16 for 1/50th of a second at ISO 100 using a Singh-Ray warming polarizer filter and 2-stop graduated neutral density filter. Post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3.
Click on the image above for a larger version.



Filed under: Photography Tagged: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3, Canon, Canon 5D Mark II, Landscape Photography, Nature Photography, Palo Duro Canyon, Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Photography, Texas High Plains, Texas Landscape Safari, Texas Landscapes

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