Yosemite View, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This photo appears in Creative Black & White: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques on pages 118-119. Here’s what I wrote about the image:

Photographing during a clearing winter storm in Yosemite, I worked hard to find a slightly different angle to frame the marvelous vista that opened before me. It was hard to see this view without thinking of the sumptuous Ansel Adams photography of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada mountains, so naturally I wanted to create a photo that could be successfully converted to black and white.

To achieve this goal, I knew that I would need to have a sense of crispness across the entire image. This meant that I would need maximum depth-of-field. So I stopped my camera all the way down to f/22 and used a wide angle setting to achieve as much depth-of-field as possible.

Here’s the exposure data: 20mm, 1/40 of a second at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.

Speaking of Creative Black & White, the book has been a hit almost since the day of publication. It’s the #1 digital photography book on Amazon right now (see the screen capture below).

A very special thanks to everyone who has reviewed my book on Amazon. I particularly appreciate Jack Tasoff’s very flattering review “Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston Made Digital” and Constance Halporn’s comment that “this book clearly and concisely shows the reader how to make excellent B&W images in the digital world. This has been a real revelation to me, as I didn’t think I would ever get the quality of B&W from my digital files. A must-have text for the serious photographer.”

Snow in the Forest, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Briefly noted: On a recent trip to Yosemite, snow was falling at the foot of the John Muir Trail heading up towards Vernal Falls. A short way up the trail, the snow ebbed and the sun started emerging—letting me snap this image of snow in the forest in mixed light.

Come Back to the Valley, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

It’s spring here in Berkeley, but winter still clings to the mountains. On a recent trip to Yosemite, coinciding with spring break, I took Julian and Nicky to Yosemite. We hiked up to Vernal Falls in a snow storm, and I shot this view carefully from the Vernal Falls bridge using a tripod. The scene was essentially monochromatic, with the sun just started to appear. When I processed the image, after converting to black and white, I added a very slight sepia tint.

It’s always great to visit Yosemite Valley—at any time of year.

Cathedral Spires and Bridalveil Falls, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a view of Bridalveil Falls and Cathedral Spires in Yosemite Valley processed to simulate a pinhole camera: vignetting at the edges, softness, brightness in the center, high depth-of-field, and an overall antique look.

Digital simulations of “looks” from the back pages of classic analog photography are great fun!

Winter Vista, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

To enhance this monochromatic winter vista of Yosemite, I used a split toning effect. I added a deeper sepia tone to the darker tones, and lighter sepia to the brighter areas of the image.

In the analog darkroom, toning was a function of paper, processing and chemistry. Split toning was achieved by altering the process so that highlights were handled differently from the dark areas of the photo; for example, by stopping a chemical bath at an earlier point than normal.

In the Photoshop darkroom toning and split toning are, of course, virtual—like the entire digital monochromatic process. Digital black and white is an aesthetic intention with soul, a willful abnegation of color, and an intentional and anachronistic reference to the historical craft of photography.

You can learn more about toning and split toning techniques in Photoshop in Creative Black & White: Digital Photography Tips & Technques.

Yosemite, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In my previous post I showed a photo taken a few years ago of Yosemite Valley—and noted that the work of a digital photography is never definitively done. It’s tempting, and often but not always an improvement, to rework the post-processing of older images; or to process images bypassed in the first edit.

You also don’t need to make an either-or choice between color and black & white. This image shown in this story was re-purposed into monochrome from the color photo in the last story. I created the dramatic black-and-white sky using a high contrast Red filter b&w adjustment layer in Photoshop, in case you are interested.

There’s some disagreement over on Flickr as to whether the black & white or color version is preferred (see the linked comments). I say, why not have both? A “two-fer”…