Want to know more about photography theory and jargon? Here’s a selection of articles that explains some key terms and concepts in what is hopefully plain language.
So far in this series I’ve looked at black and white conversion tools, basic black and white tonal adjustments and the different ways you can use digital dodging and burning to bring black and white images to life. But if you want to make them look actually old, there’s a bit more to do. It’s not one single technique you need, but a whole bunch used together.
Dodging and burning is an old-school black and white darkroom process for enhancing black and white images. It was (and is) carried out while the print is being exposed under the enlarger. It’s a process that sounds unsophisticated and largely unrepeatable but it’s at the heart of black and white photography, whether it’s carried out in a traditional darkroom or in photo editing software.
Black and white images are rarely perfect straight from the camera. If you’ve ever used your camera’s black and white modes hoping for some magical monochrome transformation, you’ll probably have come away disappointed. Black and white imagery relies on light and contrast… and a degree of exaggeration. Sometimes real-world scenes don’t provide the tonal depth and drama that a black and white rendering needs, and very often images will only come alive in the darkroom, or in its modern digital replacement, your image editor.
Given that digital cameras actually shoot in color, what’s the best way to convert these color images into black and white? If you set your camera to one of its black and white photo styles and shoot only JPEGs and not RAW files, then the camera itself will do the conversion and you are left with a black and white only image – though you may have some control over the contrast, clarity and even color filter settings. If you do as I do, though, and shoot RAW files, then when you process them on the computer you can choose the conversion method.
So here’s the question. Should you use a regular digital camera for black and white photography, or would it be better to get one of the few dedicated monochrome cameras with a black and white sensor? These are relatively uncommon and highly specialized cameras that do offer some advantages for high end monochromatic photography, but a mono camera is far from essential. So what else should you look for?
Is there a particular skill in shooting black and white images? There is, but it’s quite elusive and not immediately instinctive. After all, our eyes see in color, and there’s not a whole lot we can do about that. We can learn to ‘see’ black and white eventually, but it’s here that modern digital cameras can offer an invaluable head start.
That’s a good question. I had a friend at school who couldn’t see the point in watching a black and white movie because the world was in color. I tried to explain that black and white made things look different, it changed the mood, it brought lighting and drama to the fore… and so on. He wouldn’t have it. To his mind, black and white contains less information than color and that made it, by definition, inferior.
In this article I want to explain the difference between what I’ll call ‘image browsers’ and ‘image cataloguers’. Image cataloguing tools like Adobe Lightroom import your photos into a database and offer very sophisticated, very adaptable organizing and search options. But they bring their own limitations and complications. What’s the alternative?
Selections and masks are subtly different, and the ‘parametric’ masks in non-destructive editors give more flexibility than ever.
Cataloguing software can organize your entire photo collection, but how does it work and what do you look for?