Photographing Trees, Part 3--Black and White

All my previous posts on the exposure and composition of trees contained examples in color, so I thought it would be good to give some examples of black and white photographs.  To my eyes, presenting photographs in black and white usually has a significant impact on the mood of the photo.  If you decide to present your photos in black and white, you still want to shoot in color.  Convert to black and white in your software.  Programs like Lightroom and Photoshop will let you adjust the tonal values of each color, and this allows you to retain control over the brightness of the various colors in your photograph.

In the photograph above, I lowered the red and orange values and raised the yellow and green.  This had the effect of making the green ferns stand out from the forest floor.  In some ways, it's a similar effect to what you would get with an infrared photo.

You also place your photograph only partially in black and white.  In the photograph to your right, I put everything in black and white except for the green ferns on the forest floor.  This was easily done because the ferns were the only things in the photograph that were actually green.