Backlighting converted to B & W

This is a section of the Tianzi Mountains in central China. Because the sun was behind the landscape creating strong contrast, I felt this scene would look better in black and white. To convert the color image, I chose the pulldown menu command, Image > adjustments > black and white. The dialog box that opens gives you the most control with this type of conversion in terms of adjusting the tonality. The air was quite misty, and that created light rays that were visibly penetrating the sky. In post-processing, I embellished those rays by adding more of them and with greater contrast. Finally, just like years ago in the darkroom, I did some burning and dodging in Photoshop to dramatize the scene. My settings were 1/1000, f/8, and 640 ISO.