Ive been trying to do this effect for ages....please dont say its lighting because this guy doesnt use any advanced lighting setups or a very expensive camera, in fact his photography skills arent beyond amateur
This is a very trendy technique lately... I personally like it, but I think sometimes it is overdone.
I don't know if I have quite got the knack of what you are looking for... this was a small bit of lucisart and an action called Memory Lane (high Resolution) which is part of Aly's Vintage which can be downloaded for free from atncentral.com
I've gotten a similar effect to the example photos by creating a duplicate layer converting it to b&w and then bumping the contrast to around 80. Then I set the opacity of the layer to whatever I think looks cool. Sometimes I over do it. Here are a few recent entries of mine using that effect.
