Lately I’ve been inspired to convert some of my Smoky Mountains photos to black and white. There are many ways to do this, including software such as Silver Efex or Photoshop. I am a big fan of Lightroom for many reasons, and it has built in conversion that works fine. I like to add a tone to simulate the old wet toners that used to be added in the darkroom. The photos on this page were all given a sepia tone. Dodging and burning is also very useful when working in monochrome, since it’s only the shades of grey that you have to work with. All of these photos had some areas lightened and some areas darkened by using a Photoshop layers technique.
I also tend to do a lot of local contrast adjustment. Again, there are a lot of software programs that will do this, which is basically creating more separation along the borders of darks and lights. I do this to some degree for virtually every photo, but for black and white it seems even more important.
These photos were all taken in Cades Cove and were converted from the original raw image file. The panoramic on the top of the page was stitched from several files. The shot from Hyatt Lane below was taken at the same time as one of my Featured Photos, Cades Cove Morning. You can compare the two to see the difference color makes.
If you’re in Gatlinburg, come on out to Morning Mist Village along the historic Arts and Crafts loop on Glades Rd. My complete display of Smoky Mountains photos is on display at the William Britten Gallery, along with some nifty magnets, mugs, and notecards. Maybe a special something to take home.
