First couples photo shoot for C&C

[allison_dcp]

My brother and his wife wanted some photos done, and they were only home for the weekend. It rained the entire weekend. I use a Canon EOS 20D with a 50mm 1.8 lens. The settings were f/4.5 100ISO and 1/250sec. I'm trying to figure out B&W. I just changed the color photo to greyscale. Opinions? Thanks in advance.

 

[tirediron]

On the image itself, I would suggest that there needs to be more couple (get closer!). On the conversion... it's what I refer to as "midtone-rich"; mid-tones being those between black and white (commonly known as 'grey'). A really good monochrome conversion should have true black (000), pure white (255,255,255) and a nice blend of everything in between. What colour are the stripes on the woman's shirt supposed to be?

I find that the best results are acheived with something like NiK's 'Silver Efex Pro' or the Tiffen Filter Suite, however there are lots of inexpensive and even freeware colour to monochrome conversion utilities available, and if you spend some time on YouTube, you will find some excellent tutorials there too.