Ed - In the Light IIThere is a lot more to making a Black & White image from digital capture than simply setting the camera to "monochrome" and accepting what it gives you.
First off, shooting in RAW rather than jpeg gives me considerable latitude when processing the image. There are more than enough online tutorials available on this subject so I'll refrain from being redundant here. Suffice to say that I have been experimenting with some processing techniques and programs for my B&W images lately and decided to invest in some fantastic software that works with both Lightroom and Photoshop.
After installing NIK Sliver Efex Pro 2 for my B&W conversions, I was taking advantage of their online training where one tutorial used images of performing musicians to show what could be done. This gave me the idea to go back to some work I did with my cousin's band, PKK, where the strong colour cast of the stage lights was quite distracting in the colour images. The tutorial instructor was suggesting the use of Silver Efex to convert to B&W, removing colour altogether when stage lighting just can't be made to look "right".
I feel that this image of Ed, one of the band's guitarists and vocalists, is much improved with the use of a sepia monochrome conversion. I like the slight warmth retained by the sepia tone and how all but the highlights just fall into deep black background and enhance the soulful mood.
Here is the colour version of the original image for comparison.
DJE
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