B&W from the top

[Rene Quenneville]

I went hiking last week and took this 2 exposures HDR. It was mid day and quite hazy. I decided to try a B&W version in order to give some punch. I do not often do B&W landscapes. All comments are very appreciated. I also did some dodging and burning in PS.

1/90s & 1/350s
f/7.1
ISO 400
50mm
hand held

[Jory Griesman]

Nice image, with elements in foreground, mid, and background all there, but perhaps could use some more tweaking. On my monitor (which was actually calibrated yesterday), I can sort of make out evergreens in the nearfield/foreground, but with no detail. Did you try to lighten these, or was there too much noise in the shadows? Increasing the contrast, especially in the sky and possibly mountains, would also add drama and interest. I have almost no experience with B&W, but have seen Nik's Silver Effex in action, and it might be worth downloading and trying some of the presets. I'm curious to see what this would look like in colour, as well.

[Kyle Marie Barcelos]

I would like to see in color, IMO the B&W doesn't work for me in this picture, I would love to see the greens and the blue sky. Beautiful scenery. great job :)

[Morkel Erasmus]

very nice vast landscape with lots for the eye to follow. I agree with trying to extract some more detail from the dark greens - and would also like to see the colour version to compare.

[Steve Patterson]

I don't mind the foreground so much here, but do think there isn't enough contrast in the sky and background. I tend to think a good black and white needs quite a bit of contrast or they seem to wash out. The mountains in the back need more pop for me.................

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Rene,
I will offer another option....crop the D green off the bottom...so the lighter area is the base....then try pulling out a bit more depth to the layers...this will help strengthen the B&W conversion...but it would be interesting to see this in color also.

[Julie Kenward]

I can see why you went with black and white for this Rene, but I also agree some more tweaking is needed. You've got a lot of the same midtone shade of gray in this and black and whites typically look best when we squeak lots of shades of gray out of the same image.

I'd also either lighten the bottom trees or crop them out as you still have that dark strip at the bottom to balance the bottom of the frame.

[Rene Quenneville]

here is the scene as shot. As you can see, there is room to lighten the foreground elements. But the picture lacks some punch.