Thoughts on Black & White Photography

I am usually very lazy when it comes to post processing my photos. I shoot exclusively in RAW, and I found that the way Adobe renders my photos is much different from the way my camera renders them. I found the colours to be more muted and less contrasty. To give my photos some character, batch processing in Lightroom was my go-to method until recently, which may or may not have worked against some photos. 

Since I gained a renewed interested in street photography, I felt like Black & White was the standard way to process my images to remove the colours that might distract the audience. When I was processing the image below, I immediately realized that it was a foolish misconception. 

I tried mimicking workflows of a few influential photographers and tried playing around with different sliders in Silver Efex, but I could not quite get the outcome that I had envisioned. I eventually converted my photo back to colour and desaturated and selectively sharpened the photo as I had learned from Steven Huff.

When I bought my camera, my intention was to carefully compose and expose my photos with full control over everything that affects a shot. Only recently did I start realizing that developing and processing are part of the process as are taking photo. As such, I should pay long overdue attention to processing my photos and establish my own character that will stay consistent from one photo to another.