After checking the box for conversion to grayscale, I then went back to the basic panel to tweak some things:

-I toggled the exposure up some to lighten the overall picture, increased the contrast a great deal because contrast is key for black and white images, increased the highlights and lowered the shadows.

-next I moved the whites all the way to the right, then lowered it gradually back down until the clipping warning went away. I then moved the blacks all the way to the left and gradually back up until it’s clipping warning went away. I also increase the clarity to bring out the midtones and texture of the stones.

At this point the contrast is pretty good but the shadow of the tunnel is really dark and gravel ground in the bottom of the picture is washed out, as is some of the wall on the right side.  Selecting the adjustment brush I then target these areas.  First the dark area of the tunnel was masked and I increased the exposure  and highlights, lightened the shadows and decreased the contrast slightly.  The next mask was for the gravel in the forground where I decreased the exposure and tweaked the highlights and shadows so it appears a little darker but still has contrast and detail. The third mask was for a section of wall on the right of the photo that got a little washed out. Here I tweaked the exposure and contrast a little bit more, lowered the highlights and shadows, and bumped up the clarity. Lastly I made one more mask for the far background just beyond the tunnel. For this I ever so slightly lowered the exposure, increased the contrast, bumped up the highlights, darkened the shadows and pushed up the clarity, just so that walkway wasn’t so washed out in comparison to the darker tunnel. Lastly, I selected the tone curve and changed it from linear to medium contrast to give that last bit of umph

For the second photo I chose the castle in the water because I wanted to play around some more with the split toning in camera raw and thought this one would look great.

But first, I used the lens correction vertical toggle to straighten the walls and then cropped it accordingly. Next it was time to convert to grayscale and then tweak the basic toggles to help the image’s contrast. Upon manipulating the image for practice a few times before my final submission round, I notice that the tower in forefront of the image always ended up a bit washed out. I corrected that as well with the adjustment brush. Lastly was a split tone treatment for the highlights and shadows.  For the highlights I chose a less saturated yellowish hue inspired by the stone of the castle and for the shadows, a bluish hue with a little bit less saturation to keep it from overpowering the yellow. I also decreased the balance to help the yellow.