Black and White Photography: The Beginner's Guide
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Loading... - Danny Jones
- 30 Aug 2022
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Digital photography makes monochrome (aka black-and-white) photography simple and nondestructive. Post-processing software offers instant color-to-monochrome conversion and the adjustment tools to make a photo look natively black-and-white. While you can leave your camera in color mode to go shoot in monochrome, you will need to change the way your eye registers a scene.
Here’s a guide to black-and-white photography, from the photographer’s eye to post-processing.
Why Shoot in Black-and-White?
Some seek the classic, “timeless” look inherent to monochrome photos, as represented by the likes of Sebastião Salgado, Henri Cartier-Bresson, or Ansel Adams, whose iconic image of the Tetons is shown above. Others wish to focus viewers’ attention on elements such as contrast, texture, and form. Plenty of reasons exist for pursuing monochrome images today, yet the genre remains so established within photography — it represents the core, the foundation of photography — that no excuse is needed to produce black-and-white photos.
This wasn’t the case when color photography arrived. Color film had to prove its worth against its monochrome predecessor, which it clearly did. Both camps represented photography on their own terms: Color photos show viewers what something looked like, while black-and-white shows how it felt.
This isn’t to say that color photos lack feeling. In fact, colors bring so much emotion, each color representing various emotions for different cultures, that color can sometimes overwhelm the message a photographer seeks to deliver. When color begins to distract from the photograph’s intention, it is best left as shades of gray.
What to Look for in a Black-and-White Scene
The trained monochrome eye can estimate how certain hues and luminances would render in black-and-white. A beginner can simply look for contrast, the juxtaposition of darks and whites in a scene. Monochrome photography relies on contrast for visual strength. The human eye is programmed to pick up on contrast, perhaps helping our primal ancestors discern fruit amongst a canopy of leaves. This partly explains our continued appreciation for black-and-white images.
Other elements figure prominently in monochrome. Texture can appear three-dimensional when something like a strip of weathered wood shows its intricacies in a range of tones from black to myriad grays to white. Form finds definite expression in monochrome as well, as lines and shapes gain prominence through contrast and the absence of distracting color.
Monochrome photos taken to the extreme produce high-contrast yet very dark (low key) or bright (high key) images. Such a range of allowed tonality (contrast) also makes black-and-white well suited to harsh lighting conditions such as low light and “high noon” light (between the golden hours).
While sunrises and sunsets don’t find their full expression in black-and-white, most scenes and subjects do work well without color, and some excel in monochrome. Thorough experimentation will teach you how to see in black-and-white. Read More…
