Banff

In 1993 Parks Canada conducted a control burn in the Sawback region of Banff National Park.  Sawback is about 8-10 kilometers west of Banff along the Bow Valley Parkway.  The intent of the burn was to enhance the growth of Aspen.  You can read more about this at http://www.friendsofbanff.com/maps/bow-valley-parkway/sawback/.

Apart from the colour balancing aspect, black and white conversions are just as complicated to manage as a colour image - in fact more so in some cases.  Usually with colour images the objective is to make the scene look as we remember it.  With black and white it is always an interpretation because we don't see in black and white.  In the film era photographers selected their camera, film, filters, exposure, focus, depth of field, developing technique, negative retouching, paper selection and printing technique to achieve their ultimate image.  Each step was critical and required careful planning along the way.  The best photographers had a clear vision of the ultimate objective at the moment they tripped the shutter.

The digital era is different only in that we have more flexibility along the way.  We can employ filter effects after the fact and with the use of RAW image capture we can always revert back the original file.  It is imperative to get the image right in-camera through the judicious use of filters, correct composition and exposure, depth of field control etc but after that the options in black and white editing are endless.

Recently I have found that I am getting better at selecting scenes that I know will result in black and white images - this is one of them.

This photo was edited first in Adobe Lightroom 3.0 then exported to Nik Silver Efex Pro for black white conversion. Nik Silver Efex pro comes with a variety of preset black and white tools as well as filter effects.  It also allows for editing of parts of the image area and simulated different film types.  Each mouse click changes the overall effect.  The final image was tweaked in Adobe Photoshop.