Recently I have been using monochrome much more to interpret landscapes. Although colour is assumed to add life and vibrancy to an image, black and white is simpler and in some ways easier to work with. I think this preference for black and white was enhanced as I began to dabble in infrared photography. There needs to be adequate contrast for monochrome to be effective, but textures become more expressive. I use Nik Silver Efex Pro to transform my colour images. Dust spots are a scourge; they show up so much more in these images. I hope that I have removed them all here.

I made this image of Mt Cook, or Aoraki, (the highest point in New Zealand) during a clearing storm. The green foliage in the foreground was distracting in the colour image and the sky is more dramatic after the Nik transformation.