Every so often, I find my images just don't look right when I pull them up on the computer. I'll be  excited about a shot in the field, only to find myself a little disappointed when I get home. The problem for me usually isn't that I don't like the photograph. It's just that it seems a bit off.

I sometimes find that these photographs just need to be seen in a different way. One thing I'll often do is hit "V" in Lightroom to see a grayscale version. This gives me an idea if the image works in black and white and I take it from there.

That is exactly what I did with this shot from a recent trip to Monterey. A little work in Silver Efex Pro and I was able to produce an image more like what I envisioned when I first saw the scene in my viewfinder.

As a new photo enthusiast, I am slowly working to find my own photographic style. One thing I realized during this process of discovery is that I am drawn to the look of high contrast black and white photographs. I cannot quite put into words why I like these types of images but they seem to have the ability to grab and hold my attention, sometimes more than a good color photograph.

In honor of finishing my first photography class at OCC, I decided to pick one of my favorite images shot recently and convert it to black and white. While black and white images displayed on a computer monitor cannot compare to prints produced in a dark room, I still like the outcome of this black and white conversion.