Black and white was what first got me "seriously" into photography. While I never attained real mastery in black and white printing, I have spent a long time in various darkrooms. I still enjoy the aesthetic of black and white a great deal, and of course have tried to get the "look" I like in digital as well. Thanks to a lot of experimentation, some reading up, and tips from people who are a lot better at it than I am, I'm finally starting to see the kinds of results I wanted. In particular, thanks to Jim Fuglestad, aka Shutter at DPReview, who thought up the "dodge and soft light" technique described in this essay.

My father Shosta enjoying his vacation in Provence (2003). EOS-10D with EF 35/2.

The craft of traditional black-and-white photography consists of three stages: exposure, development, and printing. Each has its niceties and techniques with which specific "looks" or other effects can be created. With digital black and white, the latter two phases, "developing the negative" and "printing" happen in post-processing. However, there is a digital analogy to this three-step process. Here's the short version:

Expose for the highlights. In-camera, do everything you can to get strong highlight detail -- underexpose, bracket, shoot RAW; whatever you can and whatever it takes.
Develop a "B/W negative." Convert your color original to black and white with your favorite method -- "canned" film actions, channel mixing, Russell Brown's "filter and film" technique, the "layered channels" technique I describe below, or any of a number of others. Your objective should be to retrieve as much tonal detail as possible from the color original.
"Print" the B/W negative with tone control layers. Duplicate the "neg" twice, set blend mode to Color Dodge on the first one, and Soft Light on the second one. Add a Curves layer to control contrast, and a Hue-Lightness-Saturation layer with Colorize to correct the "cold" look. Then play with the opacities of the layers to control the look of the "print."
Finish. Dodge and burn locally, add the final touches to the tonality with Levels or Curves layers until satisified.

Straightforward enough? Maybe, but it might be some of the steps need a bit of elaboration, so here's the long version.

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