The black & white image

I thought to post some further thoughts on my experiences with the Olympus OM-D EM5 now that I have been using it for a year. But I find that after working on an image (below) taken with that camera I became absorbed in elements of the image making the technical qualities of the camera much less significant. In other words, I might have take this photo with just about any recent version of a 4/3 or APS-C or full frame camera. I also could have just post-processed the image in colour paying attention to exposure, sharpness, contrast etc. Even converting to black and white with a standard process through PS or other software and left it at that. However that would not have satisfied my 'artistic' vision at least for this image. Of real significance for me was that as a black & white image, the blacks were not as black as I wanted the in the places I wanted them. Adding black in the same way that you might add eye-liner (not that I have ever done that myself) created definition increasing the 'dimensionality' of the image. A little like selective contrast. The final image has far more impact for me than the straight conversion to b&w. I'm not really a documentary photographer nor strictly a landscape photographer. I rarely do big vistas and in this case this image reflects more of what interests me artistically - personal expression through the medium of photography.