Geranium in B&W for #MacroMonday

I am currently reading a pre-release version of an excellent black & white processing e-book. Stay tuned for the review here on blog, coming soon. With this e-book, it is like I was learning how to do B&W conversion for the first time. I had to leave the reading yesterday, and go to the computer to try some of the techniques described. The results were stunning…

I took this photograph of a geranium in my small flower garden. It was right at the golden hour, when the sunlight gives the objects this warm, orange cast. I sometimes like the effect, but somehow it did not fit all that well this white and pink flower. And yet, I really like the composition, shoot through the green stems of other flowers and leaves.

B&W could save the image, and make it into something more. I looked at it and thought I want to make the flower white, as light as possible, without loosing the detail in petals. And to make the whole photo more interesting, the green surroundings needed to be darkened. I like how the B&W helped to show this beautiful light on the flower, lighting just few stems around it.

It was great fun to process this image, with global adjustments and several local brushes. I quite often forget to add them, loosing some of the impact of the images.