Black & Whites for an overcast day

[CdTSnap]

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Black & Whites for a Dull Day by Chris Turner, on Flickr

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Black & Whites for a Dull Day by Chris Turner, on Flickr

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Black & Whites for a Dull Day by Chris Turner, on Flickr

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Black & Whites for a Dull Day by Chris Turner, on Flickr

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Black & Whites for a Dull Day by Chris Turner, on Flickr

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Black & Whites for a Dull Day by Chris Turner, on Flickr

 

[The_Pearl_Poet]

It may be the overcast light, but these images need more contrast. I would try increasing the clarity slider.

 

[CdTSnap]

Not to keen on more contrast this is more my style. Plus I've added a lot already. Appreciate your comments.

 

[Tim Tucker]

Not to keen on more contrast this is more my style. Plus I've added a lot already. Appreciate your comments.

I quite agree. But this talk of "adding" edits that are subtractive, i.e. they remove information from your image, sometimes does my nut!

If I look at your shots they lack 'brightness' and 'separation', (not contrast). But if I look at your selfie I think that it's exceptionally well done and the facial tones lack nothing. So I have to conclude that you are both capable of seeing and achieving this level in all your shots.
And this is the root of the problem: A B&W shot relies on colour just as much as a colour one does. After all the yellow/orange/red filters only work when there's blue to darken, they have little effect on a true grey sky. Overcast days have little separation in value and also have little separation in colour, so you can't use colour as a means of adding separation by B&W filtering. What many do though is to convert to B&W because then excessive contrast boosts they apply look less un-natural when you abstract the image by removing the colour first. But the excessive global contrast boosts also flatten the image, they subtract.
All object are intrinsically stable, the visual difference comes in the nature of the light reflected from them. This is after all the only thing we see and photograph, reflected light.

 

[CdTSnap]

Thanks Tim that's great and I agree. I found myself not really paying attention to the black and whites this day as I wasn't overly impressed with the photos to begin with. I should have put more effort into them really. I did spend a lot more time on the selfie as I was going to make it my Facebook Business page photo lol. Call it vein or just being camera shy I'm not sure which one lol

I agree much more with your comments regarding light rather than addin contrast. Maybe I'll redo them again tonight.

 

[CdTSnap]

The other thing was I never use the colour filters for black and whites. Maybe I should try that.