I will start this blog with a bit of reminiscing. Back in the film days, shooting colour film was easy, you shot your roll of film and brought it to someone to make prints. If you wanted to make your own prints, then most likely you shot black and white and you had a darkroom. (yes you could print your own colour prints, but it was technically much harder, things like dodging and burning were not really possible)

Today, with programs like Lightroom, or even Google Photos, it is easy do dodge, burn, and otherwise manipulate colour images. and with a click of a button, you can turn that colour image to black and white…

The problem is that black and white photography is a very different art form from colour. Back in the day I used to say it was like the difference between oil painting and watercolour painting. each art form has its own customs and aesthetic.

for this image, I did a lot of post processing to get the black and white where I wanted it. I knew this when I took the image. Even before I pressed the shutter I was planning how I was going to work on the image…

the original, unretouched image. Note there are more sticks, and less separation between the trees.