B&W Challenge No. 8 - Landscapes

I drove around scouting some small ponds that I fish at, and took the camera along.  This one is a little 2 acre pond in a state wildlife area just 100 yards from the South Platte River NE of Sterling, CO.  Taken with my Canon 60D and 10-22 zoom at 10mm, took 2 exposures and stitched them in a panorama.  Converted to B&W in Lightroom, then played with the color sliders.




Original color:

Another from my drive this morning.  This is the SE corner of Julesburg Reservoir.  This one is also created from 2 images, but merged for exposure this time instead of panorama, then converted to B&W, all in Lightroom.



Original:

Still haven't made it inland......looking at a few quick takes from today I'm thinking this might work.

Edited in SE....Full Spectrum Inverse at a reduced opacity + Blue filter.

Hi Sydney,

Nice photo.  I like the composition and the fact that the horizon is straight   Nothing turns me off a photo quicker than a crooked horizon, unless it is obviously crooked for some sort of effect.

But I can't help notice you have no black point in your photo.  If you look at the histogram for your image, it will confirm this.  Not using the full tonal range, especially in black and white photos, takes something away from the image for me.  If I can make a suggestion, if you adjust the left slider in a Levels Adjustment layer to where the data starts (or just past it a bit) on the left side, you will see it gives some depth and punch to the scene.  On my screen the scene looks a little flat which can be easily fixed with Levels, unless of course, you want this look.

Please don't take this as criticism but as food for thought since I see "Open to constructive criticism: Yes" under your avatar.

[offtopic]

I don't have "Open to constructive criticism" under my avatar because, as I posted in my early posts in other threads, I have my Gallery on another web site which was created long before joining PSE & M.  I am not going to maintain 2 galleries.  If anyone is genuinely interested, I will be very happy to discuss my photos on my Gallery's site.  It's a well known site and easy to find if anyone is interested.  I won't post a link to avoid accusations of self promotion and/or attempting to steer members away from here.  I am already in the admins' bad books.

[/offtopic]

Bailey, just an observation. I do not see the connection between maintaining a Gallery and being Open to Constructive Criticism.
Regarding Gallery maintenance: I have a 'Gallery' on here, but it is not maintained in the sense that you seem to be suggesting. Any image I want to share with the wider world I upload to Flickr; this is my single hosting site and therefore the only thing that I 'maintain'. I have a Gallery on here for general images that I simply want to share with this community (and as a consequence are considered for IOW) but this isn't a hosted site, it is simply links back to the relevant image on Flickr. If I want to post an image to a specific thread, again, I don't upload the image I simply include a link to the image on Flickr. I think most people on here operate in a similar fashion (albeit there are a number of different hosting sites apart from Flickr). So you can certainly share your images on here without needing to double up your maintenance effort (I'm assuming here that your Gallery host supports image sharing).
Regarding criticism: The fact that I have 'Open to Constructive Criticism' under my avatar is nothing to do with where I host my images, it is all about my willingness to learn from others experience and alternative viewpoint. Although clearly if you intend to never post an image to this site then I can see the statement has no relevance to you. And that is fine, there are plenty of good folk who just wish to browse and share their experience to benefit others, I just didn't understand the connection but maybe I'm missing something.
Sorry if you have already had this discussion elsewhere, I did not see it. And I concede I am now very off topic for this thread. 

Finally went inland today and took a couple of landscape images for this challenge. Both were edited in SE. I tweaked the full spectrum filter till I was happy with the results. I then added a big softy filter from On1.

u.cubeupload.com/HMCA/HolmdelPark.jpg

u.cubeupload.com/HMCA/ThompsonPark.jpg

Ft McHenry, Baltimore MD