Canon 30D, handheld Tamron 10-24 at 10mm 1/200 at f22, ISO 250

But when?

More shameless editing, not just from converting to monochrome, but from leveling the photo itself (I still shoot with the camera tilted slightly, more often than I should,) and erasing some elements that indicated the time period it was taken within. I liked the sky and the dramatic angle, but of course, when you convert an image of a WWII bomber into black & white, there's always the temptation to make it seem "period" – as in, taken during WWII. Especially when there's another bomber sitting there in the background.

To do that, I had to get rid of the people in, you know, current fashions, as well as the journalist with the digicam on the tripod. Nothing too difficult. If I really wanted to make it look more authentic (or unauthentic I guess,) I could lower the contrast and throw in some more grain to mimic films of that era.

The original is below, so you can compare. The monochrome version is more than just converting to greyscale, since I clipped the red and blue channels and used only the green because it produced the contrast I liked best; the red channel would have made that red horizontal stabilizer too bright, and the blue channel would have washed out the sky.

This, by the way, is a Boeing B-17G dubbed "909" and owned by the Collings Foundation, taken during their Wings of Freedom tour. You can see more about it on the blog, here and here.