Hey there! This week’s live show topic (and thus my blog topic) is “black and white” photography. I would say that I convert my shots to black and white about half of the time, which I think is more than most people. This week I went out briefly to shoot with black and white in mind, which isn’t usually the case. Generally I end up converting to B&W for a number of different reasons, which I’ll detail below.
First I’ll direct you to watch this video which is relevant to all photography, but is particularly important for black and white photography:
So here are the reasons you might choose to convert your images to black and white:
- the focus of your subject is a shape or form created by the elements of the picture
- the colors or background of your photo are distracting from the subject
- you want a timeless or classic feel to your shot
- the colors in the image are naturally desaturated and the color adds nothing to it
So I’ve converted to black and white for all of these reasons. I went out and took a few shots while I was at my parents house in Connecticut this weekend and specifically kept an eye out for interesting shadows since there was still lots of snow on the ground and the sun was high.
This first shot is an example of the form being the focus, the tree and the shadow of the tree:
f/3.5, 1/1250th of a second for some reason, ISO 200
This shot is also about the form of the shadow, and additionally there was very little color in the image to start as I was shooting a black dog on a grey road:
f/3.5, 1/640th, ISO 200
This shot I decided to edit for the mood I wanted. While the sun was high and it was a nice day, I was more interested in the bare trees, the stark snow, and the old wrought iron chairs and table. I decided to convert to black and white, add some grain, and some vignetting to focus attention on the subject and make it look like a dated shot:
f/3.5, 1/1250th, ISO 200
While these are certainly not my most successful black and white images (see my posts on shadows and spooky for my favorites) I think they are decent examples of why you’d choose to convert select shots to black and white.
I look forward to seeing everyone’s shots this week, and don’t forget to check your dang histograms!
Wow, these all turned out really nicely. I like the first two the most – Hungry is always a great subject for sure. I also love how these are high-contrast B&W shots, really keeping them BLACK and WHITE. Not a big fan of greyscale monochromatic shots…but that’s all just personal preference, I suppose.
I just checked my histogram and it said to go back to bed.
I’m with Justin – the first two are sharp and contrasty. They look great. I also like the way the sunlight interacts with the tree tranches. The house is also nicely defined too.
The third photo was a hard one to shoot – the light coloured furniture against the show must have been tricky.
Those are good points you mention at the start of the blog – in the past I’ve converted to B&W to try and cover up some mistake in the photo 🙁
My photography class tonight is supposed to cover B&W (!) so we’ll see how that goes. 😉
I don’t know if you use LR or not but I’m finding that using the Black&White button on the Basic panel followed by adjusting the colour sliders on the HSL/COLOR/B&W panel can give good results – particularly with landscapes that have “sky” in ’em.
Eh, you’re probably way ahead of me on this, so my apologies if I come across as trying to teach a cat how to drink milk…
Regards,
R/