Iceland, Scotland, & Colorado: Three Black & White Landscapes

Búðakirkja Church, Iceland
Sony A7rII, 70-300mm at 100mm, f/8, 1/250th, ISO 200

There are many elements to a high quality photograph: lighting, composition, color, patterns, perspective, lines that lead the eye, textures, juxtaposition of foreground and background, contrast, etc, etc. When I first started to take photos with my little Canon TX-1, I would often accidentally get one of these things right. To me and most amateur observers, this meant absolute adoration of the photo as spectacular. And indeed if one of those elements is strong enough, it can genuinely make an excellent photo. However, I soon learned that if you did a strong job with two of these elements, it increased the quality of the photo even more. And if you managed to get a handful of those elements in a photo at an excellent level, it meant an absolute masterpiece.

Maroon Bells, Aspen, Colorado
Sony A7rII, 16-35mm at 19mm, f/7.1, 1.6s, ISO 1600

One of my photography mentors, Les Imgrund, memorably told me that looking at a photo in black & white is a powerful tool to check the strength of an image. Color is one of the most-used elements of photos. One needs only to look at the profusion of oversaturated amateur images, which many inexplicably find amazing, to understand how positively we as humans react to vibrant colors. Often we as photographers are tempted to "cheat" by taking a weak image and turning up the colors to make it stronger. I myself love color and I make heavy use of it in my photography. But it is precisely because of its power and attractiveness that removing it can so powerfully reveal the strength of the image on all the other elements, apart from color. If an image is excellent in black and white and the colors add a lot to the image, you can be assured it will be blockbuster image, a true portfolio piece.

Neist Point, Isle of Sky, Scotland
Sony A7rII, 16-35mm at 35mm, f/8, 1/250th, ISO 100

Thanks to @daveks for hosting this #BWPhotoContest which is what got me thinking about B&W photos again. I must confess an addiction to color in photos and about the only time I voluntarily process a photo as B&W is when it's nearly monochrome already. So thanks for pushing me to think afresh in terms of B&W. It really does add clarity to the strength of photos to process them in B&W. Thanks also to @derekkind for judging this week's event.