Black and white photography has a timeless charm that is completely unique from its colored counterpart. It is quite interesting that without color, black and white photography highly relies on play of shadow, contrast and exposure. Black and white photos also can tell a story that stands out from the rest, and definitely creates a different effect that is unique to its monochromatic features. In this post, we will be talking about the benefits of Black and White Photography, and some tips that can help us create stunning black and white photos.
Benefits of Black and White Photography
- Creating dramatic effects
Black and white photography can create special effects because of its greyscale properties. Hence, these photos can be more subtle, dramatic, and can highlight certain features of a photo’s composition with the absence of many colors.
- Emphasis on lighting
With black and white photography, you can harness the power of good lighting. Since you won’t rely on colors that can enhance a photo, you will be relying on lighting effects, and you can experiment on different lighting styles to create your black and white photo.
- Good variety along with colored photos
If you have clients who want multiple photos, it can be ideal to provide black and white as well as colored versions of certain photos. Since black and white photos can be more dramatic and can give highlight to certain features that may go unnoticed with colored photos, it can serve as a good variety to mix up in a client’s image set.
5 Tips for Amazing Black and White Photography
Here are some things you can do to create beautiful black and white photographs.
- Focus on shapes and textures
Look for angles that highlight a subject’s position against a background, the uniqueness of its shape or texture. For example, creating travel photography, you can create black and white versions of images by taking photos of an infrastructure with interesting shapes and textures against a plain background. This can exude a more dramatic effect for your photos.
- Create a high contrast set
If you are doing studio or still life photography in black and white, it is important to create sets that are usually high contrast. The more difference between an image’s monochromatic features, the more attractive it is as a black and white photo. You can manipulate this by making use of studio lights and placing them in certain angles or cast or remove shadows depending on your preference.
- Try increasing your exposure
In situations where you can’t manipulate a set’s lighting, you can adapt by increasing your camera’s exposure. Creating long exposures, especially for darker sets can help you create a contrast that you won’t usually achieve in regular conditions. This results to a better black and white photo for nature photography with dim light conditions. Make sure to use a tripod for situations you would need long exposures, to prevent blurring of photos.
- Make use of filters
It can also be helpful to utilize a camera accessory such as polarizing and Graduated neutral density filters to help you retain details on a photo white increasing the contrast between its black and white tones. Through the use of filters, you can also increase the contrast in a photo’s black and white features without compromising small details such as textures or small objects than can be obscured through the absence of color. Colored filters, such as red and orange ones during a shoot can also be helpful if you are a film photographer who wants a better black and white image during processing.
- Dodge and Burn Tool
Another trick that you can do during image editing and processing is the use of dodge and burn tool. If you have a photo that was originally taken from colored, but looks less appealing in black and white, you may want to make use of the dodge tool to create highlights and burn tool to create shadows. There are 3 settings for both features: highlights, midtones and shadows. You can pick which lighting aspect needs to be lightened or darkened depending on your photo, and what results is a black and white image with better contrast.
Black and white photos have their own uniqueness that can only be achieved by doing specific tricks. Making use of these tips will help you produce black and white images that are beautiful and one-of-a-kind for your clients.
Author Bio: Ismail Sirdah is a professional photographer. He is an established photographer that has gained recognition in his earlier years through the feature of his work in several local publications. He was also able to cover events featuring several media personalities and public icons.
