Tip of the day: Experimentation

Being comfortable enough to experiment is the only way I've ever grown because for me, growth equals change.

Upon finalizing the above image of Tiffany, I started wondering what it would look like in B&W. It had incredible contrast built-in to the image but until I tried, I wouldn't really know it would look in B&W.

So I played around with it and then Photoshop CS5 crashed when I was ready to save it.

Unfortunately for me, I only had the final flattened TIFF color version of the file so, I had to start over. I figured if I was going to start over, I might as well pick another image. In my experimentation today, I discovered that contrast can be created simply by killing bottom/top levels. The image you see below has no curves adjustment/contrast-brightness adjustment/gradient map responsible for the contrast you see. It's all levels.

I never knew that the levels adjustment could be this powerful.

So experiment! Do something unordinary, after you get what you need of course. Try something unorthodox. Try the things that we're not supposed to do as photographers/retouchers. You just might figure out the next "big thing"!