Playing with Black and White

 

Earlier in the summer I talked a little bit about my new(ish) appreciation for black and white images.  Even earlier than that I talked a little bit about dance.

If you follow the dance link you will see a color version of the picture in this post.  At the time I liked that picture, but I knew there was not enough difference between the dancer and the hay.  She gets lost in it.  There are many ways I could have fixed that in camera.  I think the easiest way may have been to put her further in front of the bales, shot with a longer lens, and simply thrown more light on her than the background got.  But I didn't.

I thought it would look nice in black and white, and wanted to see if I could make the subject stand out from the background in the process.  I ended up masking the subject in two black and white conversion layers, and manipulating the tones in the background and subject independently of one another.

I may have pushed the difference a little to far, but I will make that decision a little later.  As it stands, right now, I like the black and white much better than the color version.