Last year I spent part of my summer visiting Northern Spain about an hour north of Barcelona. A beautiful city along the Mediterranean called Blanes. Once I got back from that month long trip it was back to work and the pictures I had taken took a back seat to every day life.

Yesterday I decided to take the time to go through those pictures and there were some real gems in the bunch. I enjoyed processing these pictures so much that it brought back memories of the fun we had for that month. My little one just turned two years old and in my opinion this coming summer would be the perfect time to take her back to experience the culture and beauty of this small city along the Mediterranean.

All this to say, go back through your old pictures because you never know the gems that could be lurking in your Lightroom or Aperture library.

What I love about shooting digital is that it doesn’t force us to choose between shooting a picture black and white or in color like it did in traditional photography. We can simply take the picture in color and convert to black and white later.

Of course there are many different ways of converting an image to black and white but so many of them take the wrong approach. First off, two ways of not doing the conversion is a) in camera or b) converting the image using a greyscale conversion. Both ways tend to leave the image looking dull and flat.

The best way, in my opinion, of converting to black and white is either through the channel mixer in Photoshop or by using plugins like Nik’s Silver Efex. Both ways will give you dynamic images with plenty of contrast all the while keeping the tonal ranges found in the original photo which is what we aim for when converting to black and white.

Here’s a great article for beginners and even more experienced shooters who think good pictures are a result of good gear. Buying more expensive lenses does not equal better pictures. Great read!

http://www.frankdoorhof.com/site/2011/12/the-secret-camera-revealed/