Just a quick tip for shooting in black and white. On many cameras now you can save the RAW image (NEF for Nikon DLSRs), yet you can select Black and White for your colour settings. This allows you to view the image as the camera views it in black and white. This may not be as you see it or want to see it after processing, but it's a start and a useful tip while getting used to thinking in black and white.

The advantage of doing it this way is that the colour data is still stored in the RAW image so you can process that later in your software. Even the basic software such as iPhoto allows you to do that.

Depending on the camera, you may have to store RAW and jpg, although with the Nikon D80 you can save RAW (NEF) and display in black and white.