I've noticed when viewing black and white photos that some look great in black and white and some look really flat and grey. I can't put my finger on what it is that makes a good black and white picture? I think it's to do with the dark parts and shadows, but I'm not sure. I just wondered if there were any tips and tricks for a good black and white shot because whenever I try it looks rubbish.
I am still learning (and struggling) with this same issue. @olivetreeann has organized a book club, which is a black and white challenge for February. This challenge is called flashofred2017. I highly recommend looking at her photos and at this challenge. She seems to have great black and white skills and understanding.
@emma78 If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the discussion thread or any one of my pictures. If I can help, I love to do it! Also, last year we used the ebook The Magic of Black and White by ?? Bartdorff (can't remember his first name- it might have been John). It was easy to read and had a lot of good examples and instructions. This year's book is an easy read too, but it has no pictures! I still can't figure out that one! Anyway, will be glad to help if I can.
@olivetreeann thank you! I have just read week 1s assignment and had a play with my iso settings and tried some high key shots. I have already learnt something! Thanks, I will have a go at all the assignments, but I'm a week behind now but it doesn't matter. I have never properly tried black and white photography so I am excited to try something new. I am glad you are on hand to post some example pictures, otherwise I wouldn't have a clue what they are supposed to look like. That's a weird photography book without pictures!
one thing I have learned is that when photographing in B&W, you have to remember that red and green and blue colors convert to a similar shade of grey and that can create a muddy effect. It helps to see images in light and dark or shadow and light values( or contrast). When converting to B&W, I usually increase contrast and clarity more than I would in color.
If you are really interested in doing black and white well, have a look at an Ansel Adams book. He was a master of the form.
One of his favourite tools was the Wratten #90 filter. If you hold it in front of your eye for a few seconds, then take it away, it tricks your eyes into seeing the relationships between the tones in a scene.
Those filters are expensive, but there is a Tiffen filter that does the same thing.
Or, just use the B&W preview on your camera. I'm sure Ansel would have approved. :-)
@olivetreeann I really enjoeyed last years flashofred book we worked throug and the huge amount of work to summarize it. It was John Batdorff "Black and White" - From Snapshot to Great Shots. ISBN: 978-0-321-77457-6 for about 25 US$. I bought the book and it helped me to see black and white better, by understanding contrast, texture, colour conversion and lightning. Lots of helpfull graphs for me, to understand physics too. And it helped me to to get a decent workflow in post-processing.
I've found it needs to be higher contrast than you think you need. Generally it's better to shoot colour then covert in post processing and really bump up the contrast and saturation of the colour image before converting. There's a fine line between not enough and too much though!
I bought that book too on the recommendation of Ann @olivetreeann when I did flashofred 2016 and am using it again this year. The images, I think are especially helpful with his commentary.
I have a few things to offer that I learned by shooting in black and white film and printing in the darkroom.
1) Not all subjects really work in black and white and looking for the contrast and visible texture really helps
2) If you exposure is on a grey day you may lose contrast. If it is at noon on a bright and sunny day you may end up with a lot of highlights and blacks, but not enough mid tones.
3) Very few times is your white going to be pure white (snow, back drops) and you want to get the whites just past the white of paper. Skin tones can get lost with not enough time.
4) You do not want your blacks to get too blacks because you may lose subtle highlights
5) When you do this digitally, I like to actually desaturate instead of just using an easy filter. I find that I maintain more control over my whites and blacks
6) do not be afraid to adjust contrast.
Except for conscious reasons otherwise, it's contrasts in tone, that is light to dark, across the range that is effective in Black and White. Black is a true black and white is a true white, and all the shades of gray in between will be present. That is how the classic masters operated. Some effects, white-on-white for example, and some reasons to keep to the mid tones, can be effective, but for interest one then has to resort to "extra" techniques.
Some folks might ask about the terms "high key" and "low key." Doesn't high key mean that all the tones are on the high side, and low key on the bottom side? The key word is "all," and in general there will usually be Blacks on high key shots (not a lot, but almost always some), and the opposite for low key. Again, it's the minimal amounts of the opposing tone that generally makes such attempts successful.
You have to be prepared to realize that you must rely on post processing, tone and contrast manipulation as well as several sharpening (or desharpening) techniques to pull off consistently interesting "Black and White." All the old masters, Ansell Adams is mentioned above, the Westons, father and son, all spent a great deal of effort "in the darkroom" at the print stage especially, It has been said by many current digital photographer gurus that every image is enhanced with post processing (that is not in the camera), but B&W especially so.
You are shooting "raw" of course?
Also, in an effort to keep blacks black and rich, experiment with Duo toning and Tri toning . Not so that you actually notice the color and say things like "I love the sepia effect." Rather it's when you don't notice the ink "color" that the effect can really grab you. It's a taste thing. Personally, I find most non-toned DIGITAL black and white very "cold," which might be a cool effect for certain subjects, but ultimately starts to look rather bland and lifeless to me. Again the old masters are worth a study. the "texture" of the blacks especially are worth watching, often produced by different analog films, but often at the print stage witch conscious "toning" to move the "warmth" or the "coolness" one way or the other.
Lots of fun. And something you might find interesting. Take a single digital image, and interpret different ways in B&W "conversions," strongly contrasting ways. It's fun and especially easy in the digital world to hone your techniques. In fact, B&W processing makes this much more successful, and more importantly easier, than with color. Color does not tend to take to "different" color interpretations well. In a very real sense "B&W" is much easier than color to come up with a strong image. Since it is, essentially, an abstraction to begin with (a mapping of what is "real," here color) and can be manipulated much further...
B&W is, truly, fun and not at all difficult. Do you have to "think" in B&W as you are shooting? Let me be the heretic and say, no not really. Why? Because you can so strongly manipulate the "tone" (the color mapping to grayscale values) to come up with many effects you might not have originally "seen" and that indeed might have little bearing on the "tone" (lightness value) of the original color. After a while you begin to notice patterns in a Color image that will lend themselves nicely to that manipulation.
Thank you @frankhymus for that detailed explanation, you have given me a lot to think about. I am having fun learning about black and white photography and trying out new things.
@phillyphotos Thanks for your advice and tips. I am definitely learning that not all subjects work in black and white. I have also found that taking pictures on a bright sunny day does not give a good b/w picture because it just makes everything bright grey, or maybe that's just me.
@emma78 Have fun is the first thing you do! Experiment and don't take anything for granted until you try it out. This is especially true of "black and white" conversions. Experiment, try out even the wildest things, and you'll get a feeling for the nuances.
If you are not comfortable doing it all yourself to start, the free "Nik" product suite, for B&W that is Silver Efex pro is a nice place to start. https://www.google.com/nikcollection/
A quality suite with quality "presets." Of course you can, and should eventually, do it all yourself, but a super suite, especially for the Silver Efex B&W.
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Here is the description of the project by @olivetreeann https://365project.org/discuss/themes-competitions/29240/flash-of-red-february-returns
And here are summaries on how to approach black and white photography from the first weeks:
Week 1: https://365project.org/discuss/themes-competitions/29246/flash-of-red-february-week-1
Week 2: https://365project.org/discuss/themes-competitions/29276/flash-of-red-february-week-2
Lots of useful information on how to start seeing in black and white.
I hope this helps.
@daisymiller @vera365
Thank you for your vote of confidence ladies!
One of his favourite tools was the Wratten #90 filter. If you hold it in front of your eye for a few seconds, then take it away, it tricks your eyes into seeing the relationships between the tones in a scene.
Those filters are expensive, but there is a Tiffen filter that does the same thing.
Or, just use the B&W preview on your camera. I'm sure Ansel would have approved. :-)
I bought that book too on the recommendation of Ann @olivetreeann when I did flashofred 2016 and am using it again this year. The images, I think are especially helpful with his commentary.
1) Not all subjects really work in black and white and looking for the contrast and visible texture really helps
2) If you exposure is on a grey day you may lose contrast. If it is at noon on a bright and sunny day you may end up with a lot of highlights and blacks, but not enough mid tones.
3) Very few times is your white going to be pure white (snow, back drops) and you want to get the whites just past the white of paper. Skin tones can get lost with not enough time.
4) You do not want your blacks to get too blacks because you may lose subtle highlights
5) When you do this digitally, I like to actually desaturate instead of just using an easy filter. I find that I maintain more control over my whites and blacks
6) do not be afraid to adjust contrast.
Some folks might ask about the terms "high key" and "low key." Doesn't high key mean that all the tones are on the high side, and low key on the bottom side? The key word is "all," and in general there will usually be Blacks on high key shots (not a lot, but almost always some), and the opposite for low key. Again, it's the minimal amounts of the opposing tone that generally makes such attempts successful.
You have to be prepared to realize that you must rely on post processing, tone and contrast manipulation as well as several sharpening (or desharpening) techniques to pull off consistently interesting "Black and White." All the old masters, Ansell Adams is mentioned above, the Westons, father and son, all spent a great deal of effort "in the darkroom" at the print stage especially, It has been said by many current digital photographer gurus that every image is enhanced with post processing (that is not in the camera), but B&W especially so.
You are shooting "raw" of course?
Also, in an effort to keep blacks black and rich, experiment with Duo toning and Tri toning . Not so that you actually notice the color and say things like "I love the sepia effect." Rather it's when you don't notice the ink "color" that the effect can really grab you. It's a taste thing. Personally, I find most non-toned DIGITAL black and white very "cold," which might be a cool effect for certain subjects, but ultimately starts to look rather bland and lifeless to me. Again the old masters are worth a study. the "texture" of the blacks especially are worth watching, often produced by different analog films, but often at the print stage witch conscious "toning" to move the "warmth" or the "coolness" one way or the other.
Lots of fun. And something you might find interesting. Take a single digital image, and interpret different ways in B&W "conversions," strongly contrasting ways. It's fun and especially easy in the digital world to hone your techniques. In fact, B&W processing makes this much more successful, and more importantly easier, than with color. Color does not tend to take to "different" color interpretations well. In a very real sense "B&W" is much easier than color to come up with a strong image. Since it is, essentially, an abstraction to begin with (a mapping of what is "real," here color) and can be manipulated much further...
B&W is, truly, fun and not at all difficult. Do you have to "think" in B&W as you are shooting? Let me be the heretic and say, no not really. Why? Because you can so strongly manipulate the "tone" (the color mapping to grayscale values) to come up with many effects you might not have originally "seen" and that indeed might have little bearing on the "tone" (lightness value) of the original color. After a while you begin to notice patterns in a Color image that will lend themselves nicely to that manipulation.
All the best.
If you are not comfortable doing it all yourself to start, the free "Nik" product suite, for B&W that is Silver Efex pro is a nice place to start. https://www.google.com/nikcollection/
A quality suite with quality "presets." Of course you can, and should eventually, do it all yourself, but a super suite, especially for the Silver Efex B&W.