Dramatic skies in black and white

So my love of a dramatic sky, whether it be deep deep blue in hue or cloud filled and angry can be date quite a ways back.

Somewhere along the line in my Black and White work I wanted more than what the film could do on its own.

First I tried polarizing filters and that helped to a degree to darken the sky on a cloudless day, but it wasn't quite enough.

I opted to purchase a deep red filter for the camera. This accomplishes many things with a panchromatic film...one that is sensitive to all colors equally. First darkens things opposite of red on the color wheel like greens and blues, secondly it lightens reds and its neighbors like yellows all of which contribute to a more dramatic image than simply shot without a filter.

These were shot at and near the Split Rock Lighthouse on Minnesota's shore of Lake Superior for an "general magazine" assignment for my "C&P 408" class back at SIU-C.

An interesting trend I noted in my images from the beginning of college to the end is that I relied less on cropping and shot with full frame in mind more in my senior end. Blame it on my fine art photo friends and their "full frame society" that they had than anything else.

Fresh Snow in the San Gabriel Mountains

The snow came down low(ish) during yesterdays storm. "Ish" as in about 2,500 feet which was not quite low enough to get me into real snow for shooting this morning.

I shot this with the B&W option on my EOS 20D, maximum file size for best detail. I opted to use the "red" filter option to darken the sky to increase the contrast with the clouds and snow details on the distant peak. That filter option made the green of the plants in the foreground darker in tone as well to further accentuate the bright white of the clouds and the snow.

This image is show on CA Highway 39 near where it is blocked off with barricades along the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. Aside from the stunning mountain views, this stretch of road is one of my favorites to just get in a car and "drive" and enjoy the twisties.

San Gabriel River and San Gabriel Mountains

Today I hiked the river. Intent was to concentrate on just shades of gray and contrast. I dialed in slowest relative ISO for minimum noise and maximum detail. Whilst I was at it I selected the "red" photo-filter option so the jpegs would have the appearance of a black and white film shot through a red filter.

Back in the day of Black and White silver based photography one would slap on a real "RED" filter, deep red no less for a variety of reasons. For landscape photography it lightened the yellows and reds of flowers while making the blue sky and green foliage darker. You did this in particular when you wanted to accentuate the sky and get better cloud detail. With portraiture it tended to help lighten the skin and even out the complexion. Obviously I went for cloud detail today.

Of course, I shot with RAW/Jpeg combo. The RAW images have all the detail and colors there just in case I get a wild hair and want to do something with them one of these days.