I dusted off my D7000 and fisheye lens the other day, and went into downtown Bangkok. And as if fisheye photos were not enough, I decided to try processing them as monochromes.

Fisheye view of CentralWorld shopping mall, Bangkok

It seems that more and more photographers are going “retro” into monochrome. Despite having cameras and computers with processing power that would have been just a dream not that long ago many of us are forsaking colour for the simplicity of black and white, only to find it’s not that easy !

I’ve tried the easy way, using Topaz’s Black and White effects, I’ve tried several methods that I have read in photography magazines using Lightroom and Photoshop, none have really satisfied me. For these 2 photos I used Photoshop, by adding a B&W conversion layer, then dodging and burning, then back into Lightroom for tweaking contrast and clarity and I know they still have room for improvement …but hey, practice makes perfect !
One thing I did learn today from reading a photo magazine, after taking these photos, is to set the picture control (or whatever your camera’s maker calls it) to Monochrome and use live view. On my camera at least, I can then see the world in black and white, instead of looking through the viewfinder at a colour image and trying to visualise it as monochrome. And if you are shooting in RAW, as you really should, you still get the full colour info if you change your mind and want to have a colour image later. I’m sure all that is in the manual, somewhere among the 450-odd pages, but I must have skipped that page !