04 Nov 14. Today we look at the same image as yesterday except that I've removed all the frilly edge stuff and converted it to B & W. As most of you may recall from earlier mailings, I grew up with a B & W darkroom directly across from my bedroom in the basement of our house. I hold many fond memories of my room and the darkroom and among the best are those of watching the magic of a B & W image materialize on the surface of a piece of paper submerged in those strong smelling chemicals. Those were truly special times, and I'm only now beginning to fully appreciate the impression they made on a young child's mind. As I play with digital images I'm finding a strong pull to make them as B & W as opposed to just leaving them as color. So now I make a B & W version of every image I prepare for these mailings. Using the major digital imaging program around today, I have 7 different native approaches to creating that B & W image, along with an additional four pieces of software I've purchased to improve on the native capabilities. The 7 ways to do it are as follows for those of you who may be interested: 1) generic grey scale conversion, 2) desaturation via an adjustment layer, 3) monochrome channel mixer layer, 4) a B & W adjustment layer, 5) using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), 6) Lab color mode, and 7) employing a gradient map. Not all of these are equal in their ability to provide for a decent B & W image, and in fact they vary greatly. I employ method 7 on every image to ensure I'm getting the best color image possible, but why and how it's done can be another discussion. In addition to these 7 methods, I have available a set of actions called "The Digital Zone System" which attempts to replicate the work of Ansel Adams, another set of actions called "T K Actions" which works similarly albeit very differently, and two plug-ins for directly manipulating a color image into B & W, one called "silver Efex Pro 2" and the other "BW Effects 2." There are many more programs that could be employed which I don't have. For this image I've used the plug-in silver efex to achieve my desired result. I also made another using just method 7, but decided that I liked this version better. So for all you B & W lovers, here's your version. Nikon D300s; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 200; 10 sec @ f / 6.3.