If the mood fits, darkness should not be avoided. Your frame can convert to a nice B&W with sufficient contrast, bright areas, and tonal structure. Keep in mind that as you go through the conversion process, one of the tools at your disposal is the white balance. As you shift the white balance sliders, colors change around and may yield a better tonal structure. That's why we used to use colored filters in the B&W days. Here is a pair of images, I converted the original into the monochrome you see and even added the slight toning in the conversion stage, not added via color grading. (Vetrans Memorial Auditorium, Providence, RI) Feel free to download the original and apply a different B&W conversion method if you like.
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