The beauty of black and white

I recently read Andrew Gibson’s ebook on The Magic of Black and White and got inspired to work on a few images of my own this week. I don’t do too many black and white conversions with my photos, but with some images it really creates a beautiful impact. Andrew’s ebook is a very good read and he gives his straight forward approach to black and white conversion and split toning images. Split toning is something new to me as I usually only add color to my black and white images with Photoshop’s color filters. I like the results of the split toning methods he shows in this ebook.
Playing with Panoramas

I have been shooting a lot of panoramas lately, experimenting with what works and looks best. I have used Photoshop’s photomerge for a long time now and have always found it to be useful. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago, when I was visiting my dad, did I try photomerge on his computer using CS3. I was amazed at the quality that was produced compared to what I generally get with CS2. I created about fifteen different panoramas while I was visiting my dad (all of the inside of his house), all with Photoshop’s photomerge, and only one of them didn’t come out perfect with its alignment.
Ebooks – Great Photography Resource
I am always looking at other photographers images to help me stay grounded and get inspired. I came across a couple of photographers sites in the past few months that I wanted to share. The first is the work of Mitchell Kanashkevich. Mitchell is a travel photographer from Australia and the way he uses light [...]
Portrait black & white conversion
I have recently been experimenting with some different post-processing techniques and I would like to share two of my images here. Generally, I do not do a lot of post-processing. I want my images to reflect what I saw (capturing the light, mood and subject of the photo) and not have the image look like [...]
Photoshop tutorial for post-processing your underwater pictures
(Update 2012: I have a newer tutorial on editing underwater photos which can be seen on Light Stalking’s website) This is short tutorial to show you how I make quick edits to some of my underwater photos. Most underwater pictures will have a green or cyan color cast that needs to be removed and light/detail [...]

Jacob is a freelance travel, culture and documentary photographer based in the Philippines. His passion lies in creating images that communicate a strong sense of place and cultural awareness in unique, challenging situations. His photographs often reflect his background in conservation and explore issues related to the human condition and natural world.