Black & White Portraits

I really like doing bright overhead sun portraits in Black & White. The sun accentuates the graininess of the B&W shot and gives you some great shadows. And sometimes color images can really be brought to life by turning them B&W in the editing stage. Here is one example. This is a mundane profile shot of my brother Troy.
This doesn't say a whole heck of a lot to me, but it is clear so I keep it.


First I cropped it down to a head shot, then clicked the Gray Scale button in Lightroom. As far as editing, all i did was crank the recovery to define his profile, then I dropped the exposure down one full step darker and added 15% to the Blacks. Once that was done, I decided to crop in further to really highlight the texture the B&W had given his face. This is one end result I am very happy with.