Afar – Death Valley

This is another B&W print from the Mesquite Dunes of Death Valley. I get a strange grain structure when converting my images taken with a 5Dmkii to Black and White for some reason. It gives this very digital grain look. I'm not sure if it's a combination of noise reduction, sharpness and clarity mixed with a ton of contrast. I've noticed the best way to get rid of it is to use Topaz Denoise 2 on the image before doing any processing. It kills most of the noise and gives a cleaner image to manipulate. That way when you add contrast you're not increasing the contrast of the noise as well that's embedded in the raw. Makes sense to me at least. Sorta works the same with HDR as well.

Afar – Death Valley, California