I want to say there was not a lot of opportunity to get outside with the camera yesterday but sitting here typing the words I know that is just an excuse.  When it is overcast, rainy and foggy or if the weather is not pristine I have a hard time motivating myself to use the camera.  I’ll have to work on that…

Around lunch time I went out to grab a picture of the fog that just wasn’t going to go away.  I had a vision in my head that a moody picture would sum of the feeling for the day and thought a fog filled picture of the woods would do just that.  There was not much sunlight making its way through the clouds so I knew the colors in the picture would be subdued.  Even as I took the picture I knew I would be processing it as a B&W or monochrome image.

The only adjustment in Lightroom was to crop the picture to a 16×9 aspect ratio and then I used Topaz Labs B&W Effects.  I generally start with one of the presets in B&W Effects and then tweak them to get the image I see in my head.  For this picture I used the Traditional – Warm Tone II Smooth preset.  I didn’t want to enhance the detail in the picture because I thought that would ruin the mood.  I didn’t make any further adjustments beyond the preset, it captured the look I wanted.

Overall, I’m happy with the result.  The finished image was what I was looking to achieve.  I’m still experimenting with the camera and different styles.  I will say I am becoming a bigger fan of monochrome images.  I have a feeling the B&W Effects plugin will be getting more use than I originally thought.