Woman With A Hat

I seem to always be attracted to people wearing hats. The day was quite breezy and I had trouble keeping my own panama hat from being blown away. A gust of wind had come and my intention was to get a shot of the woman securing her headwear. Alas, my had was riding lightly on my head also and I fired the shutter a moment too soon (but I saved my panama). The hand gesture tells a different story. 

One of the biggest challenges in creating a b/w image is separating the primary subject of the image from its surroundings and background. As a color shot, the tones in this image were different enough so that wasn't a problem, but when I converted to b/w everything looked to be flat and the same tonality. Our eyes naturally are attracted to the brightest, sharpest and most contrasty tonalities in an image. I couldn't make the woman's blouse brighter because it was a dark color. The truck to her left was not far enough behind her to separate her by blurring the background. So it had to be done with contrast.