Shot in black and white in natural light. Doing my own black and white theme for the month of April. Going back to class so to speak... My goal for this week is NOT to do "product" photography - I do NOT want my subject to look like it's floating in air on a washed out background. My goal is to maintain some detail in the background and still keep a good focus on my subject. It's much harder to do than I remembered!
The human eye can see about 30 shades of gray between black and white - forget about the infamous book, and an average RGB computer screen can detect 256 shades of gray which we can't see anyway. How many shades are there really? Only God knows!
Same gorilla scarf as in the prior week, set on my Turkish black goat skin rug. I was going to reshoot this because it was mighty muddy (John Frair would've required I reshoot it)... and then I thought I really needed a great BAD example of "mud" in this week's theme. So here it is!
The biggest thing to watch out for when shooting black on black is "mud." John Frair said too much gray makes for a very muddy shot and thus - no good score. You still have to have pure black in your shadows and pure white in your highlights. I think it's a little easier than shooting black on white, but it has its own challenges with the "mud."
This is turning out to be an interesting re-learning experience. It really was an assignment for John Frair's class so many decades ago. God bless him! I would love a do-over in his class if he was still around.
1st week - only shades of gray in natural light - done
2nd week - black on white in natural light - done
3rd week - black on black in natural light
4th week - white on black in natural light
5th week - white on white in natural light
@phil_howcroft Sorry, Phil. Going through the same subjects as black on white. =)
@ljmanning Thanks, Laura!
@kjarn Too much mid gray range - very muddy. Thank you, Kathy!