Mark S. Johnson Photography

Alec Johnson, my friend and an occasional contributor to this site, loves converting color images to dramatic black and white. Compelling black and white photographs almost always exhibit tonal range so broad that you can practically feel the scene’s texture and depth. As a black and white enthusiast, Alec is continually working on methods to produce broader and broader tonal range. In the field, he uses filters, such as a Singh-Ray’s Warming Polarizer and Gold-N-Blue Polarizer, to capture more tonal range. In Photoshop, he uses multiple Black & White adjustment layers as well as Curves layers to extract as much information as possible. Recently, he decided to explore what might happen if he bracketed his exposures, processed the files through Photomatix Pro, then used Photoshop’s adjustment layers to transform the color image to black and white. The results were impressive, so he shared them with me. Today, I’ll take you on a brief journey through his process. To learn more, you can email Alec at alec@acjohnsonphoto.com.

In this series of bracketed images, Alec shot at ISO 100 using Singh-Ray’s Gold-N-Blue Polarizer. He was envisioning the final black and white image, so he didn’t concern himself with producing pleasing colors. Alec believes that he can achieve more tonal range with less noise using the Gold-N-Blue Polarizer.

To learn more about using Photomatix Pro, check out Workbench numbers 152 and 186. To learn more about an incredible fine art method for converting color to black and white, take a look at Chapter Eight of my Photographer’s Photoshop CS4 Companion eBook.