Black White Photography Tips

While it has been possible to take color photos for a very long time now, black and white (‘B&W’) photography has always endured. If you think about the nature of photography however, that’s not altogether surprising. Most good photos focus attention on the subject and omit anything distracting. That’s why photographers use techniques like shallow depth-of-field, telephoto lenses, and selective framing. B&W is just another way to omit distracting information from a photo.

The hardest thing about black and white photography is learning to ‘see’ in B&W. Obviously, we normally see the world in color, so it can be difficult at first to imagine the same scene that you’re seeing stripped of color.

But why is it important to visualize in B&W – surely you can just take the photo and convert it to B&W afterwards using photo editing software? If you take the photo, then yes, you can convert it to B&W later and see if you like it better than the color version. But sometimes stripping out the color is what makes the photo, and so if you don’t learn to visualize in B&W you’ll miss the opportunity to take a good photo in the first place.

Learning to visualize in B&W is a lot about seeing things like patterns, shapes, and repetition. That’s because in the absence of color, graphic details like pattern, shape and repetition have a lot more impact – i.e. color ordinarily steals the attention from these things.

Learning to visualize in B&W is also about seeing the potential in scenes where the color of something actually ruins the shot. For example, you might see a great scene consisting of a child piloting a remote controlled boat on a pond in great, soft late afternoon. Everything could be perfect for a ‘hero’ shot…apart from the fact that that pond is a murky pool of greenish-brown scum as opposed to a glittering body of clean clear water. If you’re able to see in B&W you’ll realize that you should take the shot and try a conversion to B&W at home, but if you’re not you might just miss the opportunity for a great shot.