Canyonlands in black and white

Yesterday, I got my first issue of “LensWork”, which my husband subscribed as a present for me. I really enjoyed looking at the portfolios in the issue, but especially the Mitch Dobrowner photographs of American Southwest caught my eye. I am finding this region of US the most fascinating, not only photographically. What also surprised me was how great these essentially empty landscapes can look in black and white. For me, they were mostly about contrasting blue sky and red rock. And here they were- hardly any gray, hardly any black- just all shadows of grey. I decided to give it a try- and went back to last year photos from Canyonlands. I have a lot of them, and I am not sure why just a few from Arches I put on the blog so far. Anyway, I tried to turn maybe of them to black and white, until I got a satisfactory effect. Well, I went all the way- even with fine art mat (nice to have all those handy presets in Lightroom).