Tulum Ruins in Black & White
This photo is a black and white conversion of the main image in my last post from the Mayan ruins of Tulum, Mexico. It shows part of the Grand Palace in the background with other smaller ruins in the foreground.
I both like and dislike this photo relative to the color version. The blue sky was really great, and with a simple yellow/orange filter effect it was easy to make it go dark and add lots of contrast and drama to the image.
However, in the B&W version the large structure gets sort of lost against the sky and the overall image gets a lot ‘busier’ with nothing to really dominate the frame. The tourists on the right side get almost completely lost, too, so there’s less sense of human scale here.
At least that’s how I see it. What do you think?
I also toned it slightly with a dark sepia effect in the shadow areas, which warms it up a bit without becoming too noticeable or impacting the highlights / whites.
I have a few more shots from Tulum that may work a bit better in black and white, so I’ll give those a try and post them later.
And here’s the processed color version once again for comparison.
