Ah, the emotive qualities of B+W

When I started taking photography seriously 30 or so years ago, I was developing and printing my own B+W films and prints in a bathroom darkroom. Since then we've had the introduction of digital, and photography has taken off, mostly in the colour realm. Digital cameras often have monochrome shooting options, but often these are low contrast images that require quite a bit of tweaking to get the results that you want.

Here is an example of a shot taken with a d-SLR, in monochrome, and then adjusted in PS to extract and define the image more the way I wanted. It takes about as long as printing your own print, but once you've got it down you don't have to replicate the process again for each subsequent print. That's helpful. There's also no messy chemicals to clean-up or dispose of.

Still digging through the archive

Here are 2 shots that I worked on in PS. I wanted to create a sense of the light areas standing out, and give the colours a chance to standout without being over saturated. The first is a shot taken at Lynn Canyon in Vancouver BC. The green of the water was absolutely amazing.

The second is at Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands. This peak was enveloped in cloud and mist (it was raining on us too). The craggy rock leading up really embodied the spirit of the area. Tough, unyielding, but beautiful at the same time.

I've been away for quite a while

It's been a long time since I posted anything here, mostly due to having moved and trying to get settled. I've begun sifting through old photos (both digital and film based) and started playing around with them in Photoshop. Here are a couple of shots that were taken in Cuba a number of years ago, with some modifications.