Green in the Landscape, using Black and white
Irish Landscape photography : Nigel Borrington

One of my all-time favourite photographers James Ravilious, once while being interviewed by the BBC said about the colour Green in the Landscape :

“England is a very green country, and “greenness” creates a monotonal view, and one that it’s difficult to achieve much contrast or colour gradation in. Transposing to black and white allows you a richer tone palatte, and to draw attention to the subject more subtly. Black and white contains a bright silver to deep black tone range in landscape images and thus turns a green flat image into a wonderful tonal picture”

This monochrome effect in landscape images is something that has always interested me, Landscape photographers like Ravilious used Black and white film, which when developed correctly in the dark room produces the wonderful tones he talks about.

River Torridge at Sunrise © James Ravilious

I have worked for a long time to both find landscape subjects and black and white processes that can help in getting me close to the same results.

Woodstock country gardens, County Kilkenny, Photography : Nigel Borrington
Black and white image, processed in photoshop CS6 and taken with a fujifilm X100

This blog contains many of the black and white landscape images I have taken and in the Gallery below I want to use some local Landscape images to show, how landscapes taken in colour can look when processed in Black and white.

I have placed the colour images first followed by the black and white images, have a good look at them, see what you think and comment if you like.

Some photographers don’t get black and white others love it and will only produce images in monochrome.

Green or Black and white Gallery