BW Conversions

I see all of these beautiful BW conversions posted by some of you, but I seem to be missing the mark...

Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong - not doing enough of? Suggestions? Am I just starting with bad photographs to begin with?

I'd like to update a photo wall for the grandmother of these kids, so ideally I'd like some to be printed - IF I can get some to look good

Thanks in advance

1.

This is a lovely shot - here's my take on B&W - I used levels and upped the blacks, adjusted the brightness and contrast, burned in some dark shadows here and there and dodged her eye whites a little.

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mercersmoments wrote in post #9750890
This is a lovely shot - here's my take on B&W - I used levels and upped the blacks, adjusted the brightness and contrast, burned in some dark shadows here and there and dodged her eye whites a little.

Thanks! I like the edit a lot! And thanks for telling me what you did - I am really not PP savvy.

I'm hoping others will share how they do b&w. I will try the up the levels myself. My attempts at black and white look much like yours. I'm learning too. Nice photos by the way.

This is the original:

I typically use lightroom and in develop mode, move the saturation all the way to the left, then I tend to up the blacks a little and add some contrast. Not all but most of my black and whites I will add a slight 4 corner burn to the edges.

mercersmoments wrote in post #9750890
This is a lovely shot - here's my take on B&W - I used levels and upped the blacks, adjusted the brightness and contrast, burned in some dark shadows here and there and dodged her eye whites a little.

that's about all there is to it.

it's really a matter of opinion. But, i like my blacks black and for the images to be contrasty. If using photosthop, i start out with a black and white gradient map. Do some curves adjustments. Once you find our style there, learn to use the dodge and burn tools to adjust certain areas of each image.