I haven’t done a lot of black and white / monochrome photography. I love  it, but when it comes to my own photos they always seem to look better in full colour. Finally, after a beautiful afternoon spent in Stowe Landscape Gardens, I gazed upon a stream of photos that were just made for it.

I’ve never seen so many different kinds of baby birds as I did that weekend; the whole place was alive with little cheeps! The swans and their cygnets joined me at the lake’s edge for well over an hour.

So, I decided to experiment :) After fiddling around with S Curves, etc, for quite some time, I decided to get some presets (for Lightroom 4) to get some other interpretations. And I have simply fallen in love with one known as ‘Faded Film Look’, which you can download for free here:

http://www.presetsheaven.com/2011/11/20/faded-film-look-preset-for-lightroom/

The presets were originally made by a great photographer Brant Smith http://brantsmithphotography.com/# (thanks!).

I love  the subtle split toning that makes them feel more like a film’s black and white / monochrome than a computer’s greyscale. Of course the same preset doesn’t look good on every photo, but they were perfect for the ones I took. All I did was just tweak the shadows to make them a little stronger (which, admittedly, was more due to the fact that I’d slightly overexposed them in the first place).

Taken at Stowe Landscape Gardens, Buckinghamshire,  18th August 2012