5 Black and White Photography Tips with Australian Geographic Photographer Chris Bray
There was a certain magic in developing black and white film, and the romance associated with the 'simple' art of Black and White has lingered into our digital age.
Tip 1) Shoot in Colour, then convert to Black and White yourself!
Most digital cameras give the photographer the option of changing the 'picture style' to a monochrome setting. This 'monochrome' setting on your digital camera basically just combines the different colour channels (red/green/blue) saving only the total brightness – not the colours themselves. For example, something that was 50% red, would look the same as if it were 50% green, or 50% blue – all would become indistinguishable as 50% black (AKA grey). Of course, the fact that they were different colours originally is of huge value in post processing the black and white image, allowing you to separate them, perhaps choosing to make red things become darker grey than green things and so on. Unless you are also shooting in RAW (see below), setting your camera to shoot in monochrome (AKA black and white) setting is a bad idea. While this option can produce reasonable results occasionally, the colour data (which is now lost) actually held a lot of valuable information which would have been very helpful in post production, allowing you to separate out or process differently the parts of the image that were different colours but similar brightness. Converting to black and white yourself later gives you significantly better control of your end result.
The other important reason to shoot colour is simply that if you shoot using the monochrome setting on your camera (throwing away the colour data), you'll never be able to get that colour data back, even if you decide you actually want a colour version of the photo later. You can always make a colour image black and white later, but you can't turn a black and white image back into colour!
Tip 2) What makes a good Black and White image?
Learning to visualise what a scene could look like in black and white is tricky, but possibly the most crucial part of excelling in black and white photography. It's important to understand that not all subjects (and certainly not all colour images) work well as a black and white photo. Certain subjects and scenes look better in black and white than others. For example texture photos or high contrast scenes (eg harsh sunlight & shadows) can often look better in black and white (see tip 3 below). When intentionally shooting black and white photos, you'll need to begin to visualise the world in black and white. There is a cool way you can get your camera to show you your photos in black and white to help guide you, yet still retain the colour data for processing, but as explained in Tip 4, you need to shoot in RAW for this. Basically RAW files save all colour data regardless, so if you set your Picture Style to 'Monochrome', your camera will display the raw file to you as black and white, but when you load the RAW file in an image processing program such as Lightroom (or similar) you'll see and have access to edit the full colour image.
Shapes and patterns:
Simple shapes can be very effective in black and white photography. Look for shapes that have significant contrast and contain strong blacks. When colours are converted into black and white they become various shades of grey. The difference between the lighter colours (which become highlights) and the darker colours (which often become like shadows) is called tonal contrast. Shapes and subjects with lots of tonal contrast tend to stand out in a shot so a good starting point when approaching black and white photography is look for subjects with high tonal contrast. This is obviously the opposite to what we look for in colour photography, which is why aiming for black and white can sometimes bail you out when lighting is harsh, like during midday sunlight.
Details and texture:
Assuming that a subject is not front-lit, small shadows created by even quite fine details and textures can really stand out in black and white, making for excellent images. This is why old, weathered subjects such as barns, old fence posts and even wrinkly old faces tend to look great in black and white as their rough surfaces can be accentuated.
Tip 3) Black and White can save high contrast scenes and remove colourful distractions. The black and white technique can be also used to save an image otherwise ruined by a brightly coloured distraction. When looking at a colour image your eye is immediately drawn to contrasting colours like red on green. In black and white photography, assuming the colours are the same brightness, they will often convert to uniform grey and no longer be a distraction in the shot. Furthermore, with a little post processing work utilising colour separation, even if a distraction is a different brightness (e.g. a bright red car against pale green grass) you can selectively make the reds in your image paler grey until they match and blend in with the grey of the grass.
Tip 4) Shoot in RAW rather than JPG.
For the maximum control in the conversion from colour to black and white, I recommend you shoot your images in RAW. While shooting in JPEG certainly doesn't prevent you from converting your images to black and white later, you'll have a greater ability to alter your images if it's a RAW file. Just like when shooting colour, RAW files contain more depth of information than JPGs, allowing you to lift out more details in shadows and pull back highlights etc. in post production. Just be aware that shooting in RAW will create very large files and you will need to post process them (and then export them as a usable image file) before they can be put online, emailed or used in any way - even if you're just leaving them in colour. See our previous tutorial on RAW vs JPG on our website to understand this more.
Another great benefit (as mentioned above) of shooting RAW is that you can then safely set your 'Picture Style' to 'Monochrome' to have the camera display your images in black and white (a handy preview to help you visualise the scene in black and white), safe in the knowledge that all the colour information is still being saved by the RAW file for you to work with later. When you load the RAW file in an image processing program such as Lightroom (or similar) you'll see and have access to edit the full colour image. Many photographers struggle to visualise a scene in black and white, so this little trick can give you a hand.
Tip 5) Processing Black and White images.
The big secret in unlocking extra editing power for black and white images in Lightroom's 'Develop' screen is to click the 'black and white' tab in the 'HSL / Colour / black and white' section, which will instantly display the image in Black and White, but also present you with a set of colour sliders: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green etc. This is where it gets cool - grab the 'Blue' slider for example and slide it left or right, and you'll see just the parts of your image that were blue in the original photo become brighter or darker grey! It's astounding the control this gives you in creating a black and white image, drawing attention to the right parts of your image, dulling-down or enhancing certain aspects such as the sky, or the grass - whatever! If you don't quote know what colour a certain part of the image is that you wish to separately control (is that rock red, or orange?) then you can click the little circular target button in the top left corner of the box of sliders, which, as it says, lets you "Adjust Black and White mix by dragging in the photo". You can then simply click and drag (up or down) on a certain part of the black and white image to brighten/darken that precise original colour mix.
Post a Comment