Turn Your Most Successful Landscape Photo into Black and White

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

A landscape is photographed in colour nine times out of ten. Probably even more often. For many people, black and white is a kind of last resort when a colour photo disappoints. Yet it can be interesting to convert your most successful or atmospheric photo to black and white. Give it a try.

Generally, we prefer to take a landscape photo in colour. The colours of a sunrise, sunset or the blue hour are especially appealing. As a landscape photographer, you probably have a few fantastic, successful photos of moments like these.

I have a tip for you. Dive into your archive and look for your best landscape photos. This is usually very easy in Lightroom or Luminar if you have used stars or colours to rate them. Make a virtual copy of these photos, and try converting them to black and white.

I don't mean simply converting it to black and white using the 'black and white' button in your editing software. That does not give you a black and white photo, but a photo with no colour left. That may sound like a strange claim, but it is less strange than you might think.

With black and white, you can make certain colours darker or lighter. In fact, you use colour to create a beautiful black and white conversion. The more you play with colours, the more unique your black and white photo can become.

That's not all. Next, optimise the contrast. Make sure your black and white photo contains more than just shades of grey, with genuinely dark and light tones too. Sometimes even pure black and pure white. Nothing is more important than good, suitable contrast in your black and white photo. If necessary, take a look at the world of Ansel Adams' zone system.

Take a look at the result you get. Who knows, the photo may speak to you even more than it did in colour. Or perhaps the photo disappoints simply because the colours have disappeared. In the latter case, take a critical look at the composition of your photo. Is the composition good? Or was the photo only successful because of the colours?

By diving into your archive and playing around with converting photos to true black and white, you learn not just to look at the structure of your photo, you also learn a lot about light. Where it comes from, where it goes and what draws your attention. After all, you are no longer distracted by colours.

What do you think of black and white landscape photos? Do you like them, or do you always want to see the colours? Have a go with your old photos, and tell me in a comment below this post what you noticed in your own photos in black and white.

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