Since the first colour photograph was taken back in 1861, it would be reasonable to assume that black and white photography is now well past its best before date. But while such an assumption might be a reasonable one, it would also be a wrong one. Certainly black and white will never stage a come back for snapshots but, on the other hand, the rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated. Black and white photography is alive and well and is respected as a unique art form in its own right. What’s more it can produce some dramatic results that colour photography struggles to duplicate. If you remain to be convinced don’t take our word for it; try it out for yourself with this practical guide.
A Comparison
While you might just be prepared to take our word that black and white photography does have a unique beauty, you might still remain to be convinced that it’s a subject that requires any guidance. If so, can we suggest that you try an experiment. Take one of your favourite landscape photographs and, using a photo-manipulation package, turn it into a black and white one. Most software has some simple method of doing this, often several. Now, take a look at the work of the famous landscape photographer Ansel Adams – you’ll find a gallery at anseladams.com. Many of these photographs will have been taken back in the 40s using equipment that was primitive by today’s standards, but we’d be surprised if your converted digital photograph comes close.
(Photo: National Archives and Records Administration) Simply converting a colour photograph probably won’t produce nearly as dramatic results…
…as Ansel Adams’ photograph of the Grand Teton National Park.
Converting to Black and White
If this experiment has served to convince you that black and white photography isn’t as trivially simple as it might appear, it’s appropriate to question why converting a colour photograph to black and white can produce such a disappointing result. Often this is because the method used in most photo manipulation packages simply involves de-saturating the colour image, in other words removing the colour information. But if the colour photograph had areas that were a different colour but a similar level of brightness, they would end up as very similar shades of grey when converted to black and white. The end result is that the black and white conversion has little contrast and looks very flat.
Now let’s try a different experiment. Select a photograph that has plenty of colour and open it in your photo-manipulation package. Use the ‘Split Channels’ feature to split the image into red, green and blue channels (RGB). The result will be three monochrome images, one representing the red content of the colour image, one representing the green, and the third representing the blue. Also, as a further comparison, create a black and white version of the photograph using the software’s ‘convert to monochrome’ facility, as we did earlier. Take a look at the four images and you’ll notice immediately that, while they are all black and white versions of the original colour image, they are all very different. We’re not suggesting that this is the method you should use to convert colour to black and white – although it could be effective in some circumstances – but to give you some impression of how much difference can be achieved by taking colour into account in the conversion process.
By splitting a colour image into red, green and blue channels we see there’s no single way of converting from colour to black and white.
A Lesson from Film Photographers
Although there are other subjects that lend themselves to black and white photography, landscapes are justly popular. And as a look at the work of Ansel Adams illustrates, a key feature of good black and white landscape photography is high contrast. Dark skies, often with contrasting white clouds, are especially sought after.
In the days of black and white film this was often achieved using coloured filters over the lens. In particular, the landscape photographer usually had a yellow, an orange, and a red filter at hand which darkened the sky to increasing events due to the filtering out of blue light. The choice of filter depended on how dramatic effect you were looking for and, therefore, how much the sky should be darkened. In portrait photography a green filter was sometimes used as it darkened skin tones thereby giving a tanned effect.
Mixing it up
These effects and more can be achieved using the Channel Mixer which is available in all but entry-level photo editing packages. Here we’ll look at how it can be used to achieve effects like those produced with red, orange and yellow filters although, since you don’t have to spend money on buying actual filters, with digital processing the sky is the limit. Feel free to experiment.
With your colour photograph open in your editing software, select the channel mixer. Make sure that ‘Colour Model’ is RGB (this option may not be available with some software) and that Red is selected as ‘Output Channel’. Also select ‘Preview output channel only’ (if available) so that your preview is of a monochrome image that corresponds to the red channel. Assuming that the input channel sliders are in their default positions then the Red slider will show 100% whereas the Blue and Green sliders are at 0%. This is saying that the new Red channel will be identical to the old Red channel and, accordingly, your preview is exactly as you’d have got by splitting the image into RGB channels and selecting the Red one.
To alter the effect try adjusting the sliders but aim to ensure that the total always ends up at 100%, so that the image has the same overall brightness. Choosing 50% for Red and Green while keeping Blue at 0%, for example, will simulate a yellow filter and so reduce the degree to which the sky is darkened. Alternatively you can go beyond the Red filter effect by increasing the Red slider above 100% and making the Green and/or Blue sliders negative to compensate.
Once you’ve finished with the Channel Mixer and clicked on ‘OK’ you’ll end up with a colour image that will reflect your altered channel settings (although with some packages you get the option to go straight to a monochrome image) so to get the black and white image you previewed split the image to RGB channels and select the Red one.
The Channel Mixer provides total control over how your colour photograph is converted to black and white.
Choosing your Subject
Photography involves a mix of technical and artistic skills. What we’ve seen so far concerns the technical aspects and, although a degree of judgement is required in choosing the exact mix of colours that go into the final monochrome image, this is a subject that can largely be taught. The same isn’t true of the artistic skills which, arguably, are even more important than the technical ones in achieving good results. But although we can’t teach you the artistic skills overnight, hopefully our guidance will be adequate to start you off on your own voyage of discovery.
We are used to thinking in colour but to make the most of black and white photography we need to break this habit and start to think, instead, in terms of shape. The pair of photographs ***where** illustrate this fact by taking a rather extreme example. Approaching this market stall from the gloom of a souk in Istanbul, it was the colour of the fabric that struck me, indeed it makes a striking photograph. But with essentially no interesting shapes, it makes a totally boring black and white photograph, despite the fact that I took every effort to maximise the contrast between adjacent colours in the conversion process.
To recognise good black and white subjects…
…we need to learn to stop being beguiled by colour.
On the other hand, colour adds very little to the silhouette of a windmill against the sky that is shown below. This is a subject that is all about shape and, as such, it’s an ideal candidate for a good black and white photograph. Here the shape was a geometric one but the less regular shapes found in natural objects are no less attractive.
Bold shapes are an ideal subject for black and white photography.
Closely related to shape, in the sense that it is shape at the micro-level, is texture so this is something else that it pays to look out for when you’re thinking black and white. Think the texture of rough rock, or of a stone wall, or of the bark on a tree, and you’ll be thinking on the right lines. Of course to really capture the texture you’ll have to get closer than you might normally do, in fact this might have the result of disguising your subject. If you consider photography as an art for, though, it could be argued that it really doesn’t matter if the subject is unrecognisable so long as it makes a bold and striking image.
As a final bit of advice, while you’ll certainly learn very little by copying the work of others, you’ll gain a great deal by spending some time critically reviewing the work of good black and white photographers. Of course galleries on the Web abound and you might also like to look out for photography magazines that carry articles on black and white. As you immerse yourself in examples of good black and white photography you’ll start to learn what works and, hopefully, be inspired to try out some of your own ideas.
Sometimes the subject of your black and white photographs might be unrecognisable but that doesn’t matter if the end result is attractive.
Using your camera’s monochrome setting
Your camera probably has a monochrome setting for taking black and white photographs and you might be tempted to use it to avoid the hassle of converting a colour photograph to black and white. We suggest in the strongest terms that you resist the temptation.
For a start, your camera probably uses a method very similar to the standard one used by photo manipulation packages to convert from black and white and we’ve already seen that this can result in a boring image that lacks contrast. However, there’s a much more fundamental reason. As soon as you take a shot in black and white, if you don’t like the result there’s little you can to remedy the situation as you’ve burned your bridges. If you shoot in colour, you can try several methods of post-processing until you get the effect you’re looking for in your black and white photograph. In addition, shooting in colour gives you the option of having both a colour and a black and white version of the same shot.
Take the Final Step
The subject of this article might be black and white photography but really that’s a misnomer. In fact we really ought to be calling it ‘256 shades of grey photography’. Interestingly, though, this is an area where more isn’t always best – we’ve seen how dramatic effects often involve high contrast which means favouring the light and dark areas at the expense of the mid-range greys. If we take this argument to the extreme we could end up with true black and white photography (i.e. no greys at all) and this could be effective in some circumstances.
The nuts and bolts of doing this is easy enough, just convert the photograph to Black and White (1 bit line art) instead of Greyscale (8 bit) although, depending on the subject, it might first be beneficial to favour some colours in preference to others using the Channel Mixer. What is more of a challenge is finding subjects that lend themselves to this approach. In the main this is likely to be very bold shapes. Feel free to experiment although do bear in mind that this is one effect that should be used sparingly.
