27 September 2018, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

All images are from my previous (colour) post on Tashkent, where you may find more information and context.

Click on any image to see it larger.

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Cupola ceiling, Khast-Imam complex.

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Muyi Muborak Madrasah on the right and Abdulla Murodxo’jayev Mosque behind.

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A dome of Barakh-khan Madrasah.

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Minaret beside Abdulla Murodxo’jayev Mosque.

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Chor-Su Bazaar.

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Tashkent’s metro.

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Leaving Tashkent’s metro.

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Museum of Applied Arts.

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Monochrome has a long tradition in photography.  Since you are working with tonal relationships rather than colour, there is a different range of possibilities and many images work better in mono than colour.  In the days of film, when shooting black and white, you put colour filters over the lens for different renditions though you only saw the effect when the film was processed.  These days with Digital, if you are using a mirrorless camera you can see a monochrome image as you shoot, including the effect of filters.  But assuming you are shooting RAW, you still end up with a colour image that you need to convert.  This is an advantage though, as you have far more possibilities and control than in the days of film.

Just as you can have a fully automated phone or camera and just press a button for a JPEG image, some may associate monochrome conversion with just selecting a software option for black and white.  This may work sometimes and what matters is the result, not how you got there, but for me chasing a quality image requires much more.  Once I used various Photoshop methods for mono conversion, then I came to use Nik Silver Efex Pro.  I’ve never been much enamoured of Lightroom for this though it has probably improved with the new colour grading options and I do use it for quick proofs to identify suitable images.  These days I use Capture One, which to my mind offers much more control over the colours to convert, regional tonality and the various kinds of sharpening. 

The end point for photography and especially monochrome images has always been the print.  There’s a whole different level of quality that is not available in a digital image , especially a web image.  Still, this is what we have and most of these images will never be printed.

This is the first of probably seven posts on mono conversions of Uzbek images.  However, I’m currently in COVID lockdown and have been going out each day and taking photographs of the local fauna and of macro landscapes.  So I’m expecting to make two posts a week for at least two or three weeks, with midweek posts of local images.

The next mono Uzbek post is here, two posts on.