I finally broke down and wrote Boyghost and email about the technique he used to achieve the intensity of his black and white pictures. He wrote me back today!
Here is the email I sent:
"I'm a great admirer of your pictures and I I noticed that you have a lot of black and white shots taken with a Nikon SLR. The one thing I really miss about shooting with my Nikon D60 is not being able to shoot in Black in white because as far as I can tell I am unable to set color options on it the way I was with able to my Nikon Coolpix which also had a Sepia and Cyanotype setting. Are the black and white shots you take in color to begin with or is there a black and white setting on your camera or do you just transfer it to black and white in post production? Your BW shots are so good I can't imagine that they were once color."
And here is his reply. He's nice! : )
"First of all, thanks very much for your very kind message.
I truly do appreciate getting feedback like this, and it
keeps me going out and taking the shots I do.
On to your question, I actually shoot all my shots in
color. The secret is to shoot in the Vivd+ or More Vivid
mode on the Nikon DSLRs and then convert to black and white
later. This way, you'll get lots of nice contrast in your
shots that translate very well into dark and moody black
and white photos. I personally use
b&w conversions, usually by using a script that emulates
the natural tones of some of the better black and white
films. You could also just use the channel mixer and the
curves/level tools to really up the contrast and tones of
your shots...
I hope this helps!
Cheers,
bg"
