How Did We Get Here?
I’ve always enjoyed looking at photos before and after a photographer processes them. 20 people can take a picture of the same thing and there would be 20 different photographs. Welp, here goes my interpretation of this small piece of life.
Here is where I started after I imported the pictures into Lightroom 4. For those wanting EXIF info – Canon 7D w/Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8, ISO 100, f/4.5 @1/640th sec
These edits are in Lightroom but can also be applied in your editing program of choice
I always shoot in RAW. I even shoot birthday parties and barbeques in RAW. Sure it takes up more space but you never know when you’re going to catch something worth printing. When you import a RAW file into your editor of choice, it strips away all of the data you see on the your cameras LCD screen. I apologize in advance if you already know all this information coming up!
Here’s the same picture with Canon’s Standard JPEG setting applied.
The picture is brighter, colorful, and more vibrant. So why not shoot in JPEG all the time? When you shoot in RAW, your editing program automatically assumes you’re going to do something wonderful with your picture. It strips away everything leaving you with all the vital information needed to beautify your picture. With JPEG, you lose that information and thus, a less “editable” picture (to some extent).
Back to the show.
I shoot with the grid lines on in my viewfinder. Just my preference but I also like either my vertical lines or horizontal lines to be straight across, no slanting. If you look at most snapshot beach photos, the water line is slanting down because the camera was slightly tilted when the picture was taken. The grid lines in my camera’s viewfinder help negate that a little. The vertical lines are slightly leaning so I tilted the picture in Lightroom (LR). To convert it to Black and White, I took the saturation out of the picture.
Personally this is always my first step. If I see that a picture doesn’t look good in basic Black & White, there’s really no need to continue on with that process. With that being said, if you want a good B&W picture, dropping the saturation should never, ever, ever be your last step! Personal opinion of course
From here I adjust the exposure and then the contrast. There isn’t a set number. I just do it until it looks good to me. I like rich blacks and bright whites. I adjust the slider until I see a good separation between the blacks and grays.
You can see how the picture is noticeably brighter with more pop. I next adjust the shadows, blacks, and then the clarity sliders. This adds even more contrast and separation between the blacks, grays, and whites.
To finish it off, I added some sharpening and cropped it a little bit tighter ending with this.
I’ll also take a photo into Photoshop and do some further adjustments. For now I hope this helps. This isn’t the greatest black and white photo in the world but I hope it helps a little bit with your own personal post processing. If you do happen to use this as a guide, please be kind, leave a comment in the guestbook, and click the like button up top. Take what you like and apply but try not to imitate anyone's style! (Be unique, next blog post!)
-Michael
