Yesterday I was pining for the days of black and white photography. This is probably because I’ve been looking at all the new mirrorless cameras being released which got me thinking about monochrome rangefinder photography. While I don’t miss mixing chemicals or the smell of stop bath I do miss the emphasis monochrome places on tonality, line and shape. It’s a different aesthetic. So, I began going through my library of images to find one I could convert to monochrome. A little while ago I did a black and white conversion on one my landscape images from the high steppe in Central Asia using Silver Efex Pro and I think it came out pretty nicely. For this African elephant image I chose Agfa APX 100 film grain since this was an emulsion I had used quite a bit and was familiar with it’s qualities. In addition I used a glass plate emulator for the vignette and antique look.
