You have chosen a subject that is difficult and have done a good job producing the image. The difficulty is that the subject is almost entirely green and no really strong light source. I wonder how the image would look if you really cranked up the whites and the blacks to make the image a lot more contrasty. I also wonder what the leaves would look like up close in an abstract photo that might help bring out the light on the edges of the leaves. The curves of the leaves might be interesting with a much darker leaf subject matter and well lit edges. Great plant to have as an always available subject! I wonder how many images you could create from this plant.   Posted: 10/10/2025 20:45:52

As said you have chosen a difficult subject to produce a good monochrome image. But there are tones in there. You say that you put it through Silver Efex. But you must have put it into Silver Efex and back out again without using any of the tolls to pull the tones out. You have this nice rim of red on the tops of the leaves and there lots of tones in those greens that the eye is not seeing.
So I ran your original back through Silver Efex 8 using Preset Street High Contrast, then tweaked the detail and tonal. Added Clearview 10% and added a border 14. Now this may be over the top but it does show what is in the image. So something in-between the two would be the choice.   Posted: 10/13/2025 11:16:51