It's interesting how editing a photograph in black and white is a completely different process to editing in colour. When I edit a colour photo my main concern is getting my palette right - are the blues the right shade of blue, are the greens the right shade of green and then their relative balances and strengths. After that I just focus on highlight detail, shadow detail and contrast.
However when editing a black and white photo the relative strength of light and dark areas in the photo and where they are in relation to compositional elements is more important to me. The texture of objects becomes important as well and how the soft parts of the image fit next to the detailed parts becomes a subject of great concern. I have to confess I haven't quite wrapped my brain around all of this yet and so I spend far, far longer tweaking a black and white photograph than I do a colour one simply because there are more decisions to be taken.
My entry then for the Week 17 seascape competition took a fair amount of time in Lightroom to get it how I wanted it to be. Let me know what you think in the comments :-)
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All three images were taken on a rather blustery but still warm day at Praia da Malhada on the Silver Coast in Portugal. It was very cloudy and hazy but those conditions really help with long exposures as there is much less risk of lens flare.
Equipment Used
- Nikon D7000
- Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8
- Tokina 11-24 f/4
- Nikon 18-55
- Tripod and remote release
- Cokin Nuances and Cokin P-Series ND filters
- CPL
- Adobe Lightroom
- DxO Nik Collection - Color Efex Pro