Practicing my Black and White Conversions

Back in the day I used to have a full darkroom setup. It was a color enlarger, but I only ever used it for black and white photography. I used to love spending hours in my bathroom, converted into a developing room, watching the images appear in the developing solutions. Now a days it's all digital. You can still find film, but that is just too much work for me, and I have gotten used to the immediate gratification of seeing what my image looks like on my little LCD screen and then my computer. Besides, I have a toddler running around, when would I have the time to spend in a darkroom?!

But I miss black and white. It's very different doing black and white conversions on the computer. I use Lightroom 5 and it is a fantastic program, but I look back at all my b&w conversions and they just look gray. That is not Lightrooms fault, it's mine. I'm not doing my conversions correctly. So I decided to post a picture in an online forum for critique. It was great, I got some good feedback on how to improve my image.

So now I'm trying to apply what I've learned and see if I can keep improving my black and whites. Here are some of Piper that I took recently. They aren't perfect, but I feel I am on the right track!