Hey there...thnx for your comment, very much appreciated. i plan on making a short video or possibly writing a post on my blog site (beyondthecampfirebykeith.blogspot.com) about how I achieve the Ansel Adams look...just have not done so yet. To keep it short and to the point, i will take a color image but look for qualities in the sky and landscape that will translate well into black and white. I achieve the dark sky in two ways usually combining two techniques to get the final results. i use Silver Efex Pro2 from Nik which is plugin software inside my Photoshop Elements main image software. Within Silver Efex you have various color channels that can be manipulated along with several filters that can be applied (Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Green....) using a combination of these along with a tweak of contrast and brightness, is how I get the dark sky. There are also various sliders and curves that can be used along with selecting different types of simulated black and white film types. There are various other tweaks i do depending on the image, but fundamentally I try to keep it rather simple. Thanx for asking. I also use a polarizer filter which deepens the blue of the sky which in turn helps to generate the dark b&w sky