A little black and white experiment

July 23

Lake Partnun above St. Antönien is a worthwhile hiking destination. At least as fascinating as the mountain lake itself are the limestone peaks that surround it. On a clear day, the rugged, bright peaks rise into the blue sky. The combination of the bright rock faces with the deep blue sky inspired me to try a little black-and-white experiment:

Anyone who, like me, used black-and-white film to photograph knows that strong color filters can significantly influence the brightness and contrast distribution in a black-and-white photo. The rule is relatively simple: Colors of the same or similar hue as the attached color filter are displayed brighter, while contrasting colors appear darker. For example, if you used an orange filter, all orange tones would be displayed brighter, and all colors in the opposite spectrum—which would be the blue tones—would be displayed darker.

In various image editing programs, such as Adobe Lightroom, you can also create this effect virtually. Here's an example:

Initial image

This is what the original color image looks like. It's practically unedited; I've only increased the sharpness a bit and slightly adjusted the contrast.

First step: Conversion to a black and white image

With a single click, I convert the color motif into a monochrome image in Adobe Lightroom. All virtual filters are still set to zero:

Second step: Applying the virtual black and white filter

Now I apply the virtual black and white filter: I can make various colors in the image brighter or darker. In this case, I dragged the blue slider to the left to darken all shades of blue (which in this case is essentially just the sky).

This works wonderfully because even though Lightroom displays the image in black and white, the original motif with all its color values is stored in the software.

Purists may frown upon this approach. But as mentioned above, this technique has already been used in analog photography. When I see Ansel Adams' dark skies, I'm pretty sure he used black and white filters for several of his magnificent shots.

Small photo gallery with pictures of the peaks around Lake Partnun