My Custom Black and White Processing

I have been receiving questions on this blog as well as almost a dozen emails asking me about my black and white photographs. I shall share what I did with my photographs, but do bear in mind that what you saw on my blog are not exactly good examples of black and white photographs. Those photographs are just plainly post-processed in a way that I wanted them to look in certain manner, to suit my own personal vision on how I want my photographs to look like. If you use any of those photographs and show in any photography forums, I am sure they will be bashed and would not pass any criteria of good B&W photos at all. 

1) All photographs were shot in RAW

2) All photographs were converted to monotone via Olympus Viewer 2 software (picture mode: Monotone)

3) At "Color Balance", I added RED +6 to +8, GREEN +1 or +2 and minus BLUE -2 to -3. 

4) At "Hue & Saturation", I played with the hue slider (add green cast or magenta cast), saturation and lightness until I get the balanced look that I had in mind. 

5) Overall on the photograph, I boosted the contrast, and adjusted the exposure balance accordingly. 

The most important thing to keep in mind is that no all photographs can be processed with a fix set of settings, hence paying attention to individual image is important. The above guidelines are just very simple and rough indication on how to achieve the look on my B&W photographs. Alternatively you can use Sepia tone, but I never liked how the default sepia conversion looks. If you are using something more powerful like Photoshop or Lightroom, you may use the similar settings as I have described above. 

All images were taken with Olympus DSLR E-5 and Zuiko Digital 50mm F2 macro lens. 

The Cat Knows

This is not a race

To Cross the Road

Just One Bottle

Hands and Feet

Donning Uniform

Holding on Tight

Morning Walk

Stand Up

Large Coffee

Water

Morning Company

Hang Out in the Backalley

Masked Rider

Hanging

Breakfast

Market Hunter

To Light a Ciggy

Religion Walking

At the Bend

Luke Ding

Kelvin Ng

Chun Chung and Choon Wee

Scott in the middle

It has been quite some time since I last visited Chow Kit, and I started to miss shooting there. I was glad I made it there this morning, this time together with an army of crazy photographers, attacking the streets. The reason I love Chow Kit so much is because of its diversity in subjects, and every single corner I turn to, there it was, a photo-opportunity waiting. Unfortunately the air quality in Kuala Lumpur is deteriorating, due to the absence of rain for almost one week long, and the thick haze coming in from Indonesian forest burning. Despite the bad air, I did grab a lot of photos the walk along Chow Kit streets have always been very refreshing and fulfilling to me, each and every time.