Bedwell River Valley

Bill, I think this is gorgeous. The comp is great, with a nice foreground, great reflection, and awesome cloud action. My personal preference would be for slightly less contrast overall, but that's probably just an issue of personal taste. Makes a great b&w but I imagine it's also great in color.

To my eye, a very nice range of tones. The sky is particularly eye-catching. I've so far been afraid to try B&W.

Excellent job. I love all the textures and the high contrast. Nice

This is a wonderful scene in b&w, Bill. I think the sky looks particularly good. In the larger version, the bright areas of the shrubs and mountain sides look quite "crunchy" which could be over sharpened or the high contrast.

Looks great, Bill. Beautiful comp and I wouldn't change thing. One thing to watch for, and I've been burned by several times, is haloing along ridge lines, particularly where dark meets light clouds or highlights. I think that is perhaps my biggest concern with silver effects. The slightest tweeks can make a big difference. I've adopted,as part of my work flow in raw processing, to always do a chromatic aberration fix before conversion. Great job and I hope to see more b/w from you.

The sky especially came out fantastic Bill. I like the mix of tones in the mid ground as well.

I would love to hike up this valley, looks so inviting, the cool tonal range for your choice of the B&W conversion is to my liking and outstanding. The level of contrast looks fine on my monitor.

I think the BW conversion is excellent, Bill! The image comp itself is fair, but not great, as it is hard to pick out a main subject for the eye to settle on - the hills and trees are nice, but not a strong focal point. It leaves me feeling like it's missing something and I want to see more of the scene. If you wanted to emphasize the sky, then I would get rid of the foreground grass so the eye starts with the reflection. In fact, cropping off the bottom grass and cropping in from the right looks pretty good to me, and places that prominent tree in a more dominant position. That's my 2 cents!

Hi Bill, I like this image a lot. Hope I can make it there one of these days. Your b&w processing really appeals to me and I quite enjoy the tones you have here. I really like those clouds. Cheers

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

This turned out real well, Bill. You should do B&W more often!

The processing is really good here. A lot of contrast, blacks and whites.
I only wish the water was more glassy but still very well done.

Hi Bill, nice dive into B&W. However to my eye this one seems a bit chaotic. I appreciate the B&W application with this nice contrasty scene. I do agree with a few of the earlier comments. There's a lot going on here with just black and white showcasing your comp. Leaving out the foreground bushes and cropping the sky by about 20% would help alleviate most of the chaos. i like the idea of sharpening the clouds and sky, what about a slight smoothing of the foreground and water with adding a bit of Gaussian Blurr just to the water areas?

The comp and processing look fine to me, Bill. I like the suggestion of less sharpening in the water.

Love your composition, Bill, and the nice luminous quality to the clouds. Excellent b/w work.

Thanks everybody for the kind comments. Doug and Kane thanks for the input and I'll try playing with your ideas and see what happens. Thanks for the input.