Neuschwanstein Castle, Schwangau, Germany

[murali]

 

[AlanLichty]

Beautiful castle and an amazing view. This B&W has a more subdued tonality compared to some of the other B&W work you have shown recently but it does seem to work for this scene.

 

[murali]

Beautiful castle and an amazing view. This B&W has a more subdued tonality compared to some of the other B&W work you have shown recently but it does seem to work for this scene.

Alan, excellent observation. I struggled with the tonality control. I had to balance the details in the sky and the trees below/in front of the castle. Will continue to work on it someone and see how I can improve it.

 

[Michael13]

Interesting angle, shows more depth compared to the straight on POV that so many shoot.

 

[JimFox]

Great job Murali! This does seem to have a wider range of tones, and while we can be drawn to the sharper contrasts in some B&W images, I also think a scene like this works great like this.

With that said.... Did you try selecting and editing the sky seperately? Are you just using Silver Effex in editing to B&W? Years ago I used to use it, but now I use the B&W tool in Photoshop instead as I really like how it allows you to control the brightness and darkness of each color in B&W during the conversion. So it's an easy way to say darken the sky only more while leaving the clouds intact as they are.

 

[murali]

Great job Murali! This does seem to have a wider range of tones, and while we can be drawn to the sharper contrasts in some B&W images, I also think a scene like this works great like this.

With that said.... Did you try selecting and editing the sky separately? Are you just using Silver Effex in editing to B&W? Years ago I used to use it, but now I use the B&W tool in Photoshop instead as I really like how it allows you to control the brightness and darkness of each color in B&W during the conversion. So it's an easy way to say darken the sky only more while leaving the clouds intact as they are.

Thanks Jim. I am no good at PS. I only use it to remove minor distractions and for simple focus stacking. I use Silverefx as a LR plugin. I "edit in" Silverefx first and then do additional tweaks (mosly masking stuff like darkening the sky) in LR. I try to do as much as possible inside Silverefx.