Photography - HDR with black and white

[Tiago]

Hi :)

Does anyone use HDR with black and white photos?
I do love the effect of HDR, and also black and white. So why not both?

Take this one at Lisbon, it is white stone.

http://olhares.sapo.pt/o-padrao-mundo-portugues-foto6734161.html

The monument is this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padr%C3%A3o_dos_Descobrimentos

What effects do you use in your photos when you want to give them a bit more look?
HDR is nice, but i learn that to much effect can make them ugly. So i use only 0,75 steps or 1 step.
then i usually work with "selective colors", work around "whites" values, "blacks" values. Saturation and contrast. some pictures i go to sharpen options.
This picture i used a bit of everything... ;)

[Demon Cleaner]

I was there when I was in Lissabon, is it not where Magellan left when he wanted to travel across the world?

[Tiago]

This monument it's just co celebrate the discoveries. It's from 1940.
But yes it's in the area where they started the journeys to discover new lands.
Magellan was Portuguese and he did a lot of travels and discoveries, but the major one, the cirumnavigation was not under Portuguese service.
He did the cirumnavigation under service of Spanish Crown. There were many Portuguese on board the ships, but it was a Spanish expedition.

[Harrison]

I love B/W photography. Did you know that in traditional negative and processing a B/W photograph can contain 10 times more contrast than a colour image.

I also must say that I've not experimented with HDR B/W and seeing you image I really must because there are a lot of historic buildings here in West Sussex, including the Chichester Cathedral, which would look great using this method. Will give it a go next time I'm out and about.

[Tiago]

I also love B&W,
If you like it, you should also try flash out of the camera.

I bought a TTL extension cable with +/- half a meter, i cut if and put more 10 meters. So you take a picture with the flash far away.
I put the flash at 3 meters, put a difuser on the flash inside a box with one hole, and ask my girlfriend to stand till for 20 minutes so i could do some tests. So had the flash 3 meters from me, my girlfrind also 3 meters, and the flash 1.5 meters from her.

Here are the results. Not what i really wanted, but they were the first shoots with the flash like this.
http://olhares.sapo.pt/ela-luta-foto6663013.html
http://olhares.sapo.pt/arranjo-no-escuro-foto6628235.html

[Harrison]

Off camera flash is really good for getting creative with lighting. My camera fortunately has built in remote flash triggering, and my Canon flash also supports it, so I can remote trigger the flash gun without any wires. Quite cool. This system can trigger up to 3 remote flash guns, plus one on the camera body itself. Reflectors are great also for bouncing light back. A cheap reflector is a piece of white art mounting card.

Something else you might like to try is painting with light. You do this in the dark or near dark, mounting the camera on a tripod of similar and setting it to a very long exposure such as 30 seconds. Then you use a touch and light up areas within the photo you want to reveal. So because it's a long exposure you can move the light around and it builds up the image.

[Stephen Coates]

Can't say I'm much of an HDR fan. Wouldn't mind trying it myself though.

I do quite like using black and white film though and doing prints with an enlarger.

[Tiago]

Remote flash is great, and if can trigger 3, even better. My Nikon cannot do that. I would have to buy the remote triggers.

About the long exposute, yes i love it. Some way i did this one:
http://olhares.sapo.pt/as-luzes-do-tunel-foto6152455.html