The slight color of these images, historically produced by chemical “toning” in traditional black and white photography, is a separate and final step after working with the image in neutral grays. I imagine most any capable image processing program allows mapping from black and white to color with various controls. I adapt the toning to the subject and my sense of things; it’s not necessarily a desaturation of realistic colors.

I also find that a straight desaturation rarely gives a satisfactory grayscale rendering. The objective rendering of the camera sensor doesn’t align well with one’s subjective visual perception. Not that I’m aiming to match some remembered perception (I don’t think that I could even do that with any accuracy). Rather, I’m making a new thing that is influenced by memory and by many things besides.

How do you get the tones when you go from color to black and white? My paintings appear monochrome brown when I “desaturate” them in Photoshop 6. I tried to find another Photoshop means of taking out the color but failed to figure it out. Seems like you know the secret.

I’m coming to comment late, but I want to echo the comments about the way you’ve captured light and space in these photos. One common tactic that painters sometimes use is to digitize and turn their work into B/W in order to see if they’ve organized their values in a way that pleases them. Here, you did so. And the light behind (or what we read as behind that is really on the top) is a marvel.

I actually like the first photo the best, but then, I look at the others and keep returning and returning to all of them. This week, as I was painting, I made a conscious effort to paint in the deepest darks first, and then move from there into the rest of the space. I wonder what would happen if I turned images of those paintings into b/w images — was I able to stay true to the values I was thinking of? Because I was painting trees, much of the light lies behind the primary subject; the sense of space isn’t as complex as yours (sometimes in the paintings, I had simply the front and the back) as the space isn’t as deep. But I might have to try playing in this way. Birgit’s play inspires me.

I first viewed the colors of #3 on my MacBookPro laptop, then in a slightly brighter version on my monitor and again on the laptop.

The more faded colors, as viewed on my laptop, give me the shivers – warm foreground, duller middle ground and the faint greenish meadow framed by mountains – wow!

Seems like everyone is in the same boat.

Thanks for your comments. One of the pictures in my mind, which I always look for when I’m in a certain part of Yellowstone is one of bison on a hillside with a number of large bison-looking boulders. When seen at a distance, I’m sometimes fooled.

P.S. Sorry for the low activity lately. Much to post on, but very little time…

Allow me to add to the chorus. These images are both strong and delicate. They put me in mind of stage sets I have seen and by extension the drama. The treatment of number three animates the vegetal as the bushy foreground trees appear to me as so many leafy and grazing bison. The bright and distant land the breaks beyond the ridge line puts me in mind of Moses and what he must have seen as he gazed upon the promised land.