It's important to understand that not all subjects (and certainly not all colour images) work well as a black and white photo.
B&W opera house sydneyLearning to visualise what a scene could look like in black and white is tricky, but possibly the most crucial part of excelling in black and white photography. It's important to understand that not all subjects (and certainly not all colour images) work well as a black and white photo. Certain subjects and scenes look better in black and white than others. For example texture photos or high contrast scenes (eg harsh sunlight & shadows) can often look better in black and white (see tip 3 below). When intentionally shooting black and white photos, you'll need to begin to visualise the world in black and white. There is a cool way you can get your camera to show you your photos in black and white to help guide you, yet still retain the colour data for processing, but as explained in Tip 4, you need to shoot in RAW for this. Basically RAW files save all colour data regardless, so if you set your Picture Style to 'Monochrome', your camera will display the raw file to you as black and white, but when you load the RAW file in an image processing program such as Lightroom (or similar) you'll see and have access to edit the full colour image.