Black & White Studio

I am in love! Andy (Wrenching Winz) converted one of my tulip photos to B&W and sent me the link for the Plug-In he used: Power Retouche Black & White Studio. I finally got the chance to download it to my laptop today and oooh, I'm loving it.

One of things I missed about shooting with film was that because you could shoot with only one roll at a time, you had to make some choices about what you were trying to capture. Was I going to shoot b&w or color? Film or slide? I often chose b&w, which I love (as I'm sure you noticed from my blog). Anyway, even once I decided to shoot with B&W, I still had to decide what film to use-Kodak or Ilford. Delta or Tmax or T400CN or HP5. Each film had it's own characteristics. Mostly I shot with Ilford Delta or Kodak T400CN. Then once you had the film chosen, you had to decide on no filter, or red or green or orange filters. I carried them all with me when I shot and it was fun figuring out what to use depending on what I was trying to accomplish.

Shooting with digital, I felt like I lost that. Now, I would say that 99% of the time I shoot in color and then convert it to black & white. I was using Photoshop Elements to do that but it just didn't have the same feel to it.

When I opened up the B&W studio, I found all my old friends in it! All of them are there - the filters, the film. It was like coming home again. The top photo is the original photo I was playing with. It's of a Tinkerbell ornament that I have. The second photo was done with these options-green filter & Ilford Delta film. The 3rd photo was done with these options-red filter & Kodak Tmax film. The last photo was done with a magenta filter and Ilford HP5 film. I am so excited to have so much more control again. I have a feeling I'm going to be playing with my new toy the rest of the weekend. I think I need to go pick up some flowers! Woo! Um, thanks for the link, Andy. :) Bloggers rock.