B&W advice..and pathway

[ClaudioG]

Hi all..i was playing around with this pretty boring image of mine and i thought i"d play a bit with Silver Efex a little... i really like b&w but i always seem to be way off mark and feel i have no direction... Firstly i"d like to know if anyone can recommend some great B and W reading material...and secondly obviously some C And C on my image. Anything will do>>from compostion..to pp ..anything u can think of to help me out i'd really appreciate. I took this image because i liked the lines..shadow..path...wooden poles..all seem to fight for space.



Thank you again and look forward to hearing from you all
Have A good one!!

F5.6, SS 1/400, ISO280, Nikon D5100

[tomdinning]

G'day, Claudio.
Nice shot.
I can see why it caught your eye. Not boring at all. Interesting textures, a well balances shot with seemingly good tones and contrast.
The use of colour or not is a choice based on its effectiveness as a design element and rendering the photo 'useful' for want of a better word. Some approach that choice from 'color everything and take it out to see what it looks like' to 'leave it out because I don't want colour so I'll leave it out to start with.' And everything in between. People who have shot in B&W film for a long time seem to have abetter idea of what the shot might look like beforehand but that might be too big a generalization.
Whatever you do, don't do that old cliche of selecting one colour and taking the rest out. Yuck!
I digress.
Getting you head around B&W Is best done from a comprehensive and inclusive viewpoint. Ie, as part of the entire process of photography and design. Have a look at 'the art of photography' by Bruce Barbaum. He covers everything but because he has a preference for B&W there is a strong leaning in that direction and his explanations are well written.

[Donald]

Claudio

The one book that I have recommended many times on here and which taught me so much of what I know about B & W photography is Michael Freeman, 'The Complete Guide to Black & White Digital Photography', ILEX, 2009.

[Karm Redland]

Hi Claudio, I like your image. The reflections on the planks are interesting. The only change I would make to this image is to leave some texture in the back vertical part of the image.

karm

[Manfred M]

Claudio - the shot looks to be a high contrast shot and you appear to have used Silver efex to drive up the contrast even higher. You might want to try some of the other settings that bring out a bit more detail.

[ClaudioG]

Thank you all Tom, Donald, Karm and Manfred.. will take all your advice and hopefully succesfully apply it to my images. Donald i've actually seeb that book on the book shelves at my fave store.. and i think i'll go out and get it tomorrow.. again thank you all !!
Have a good one!!!

[Mike Buckley]

i have no direction...if anyone can recommend some great B and W reading material

I just now started this thread.

[Manfred M]

I will have to agree with Tom and Donald; the two books that they recommend are excellent.

Bruce Barnbaum’s “The Art of Photography” is not strictly a B&W book, even though he does spend a fair bit of time exploring this aspect of photography. It takes a holistic approach and is more of an advanced general photography book. The current revision seems to be very much a short update to his earlier film only book, so some might find it a bit film centric with limited digital content.

Micahel’s Freeman’s “The Complete Guide to Black & White Digital Photography” is aptly named and very specific to B&W digital work. It is quite complete and I can’t say I’ve read it from cover to cover (I can say that about Birnbaum’s book though); I find I use it more when I am looking at a particular shooting / post-processing issue.