BnW Photography Tips
Black & white photography, for me, is one of the most interesting and inspiring aspects of this art form we call our hobby and passion. It’s raw & refined, natural & unusual, bold & subtle, mysterious & open, emotional & impassive, simple & complex, black & white & everything in between. The monochromatic image has been with photography since the beginning, but what began as the only way to capture images has turned into something much deeper.
PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE
An experienced black & white photographer can see the world without color. They’ve trained their mind to pick up contrast and tone while blocking the distraction of colors. This isn’t a skill that you can pick up in a short amount of time; it’s something that comes naturally in time. I can’t say that I’m gifted enough to have monochrome vision, but I have been able to notice certain scenes and subjects that would lend themselves to black & white.
One way to help train your brain is to make a conscious effort — in other words, practice. Trevor carpenter gave us the perfect example when he started his October Challenge. Basically, he decided to limit his photography to black & white for an entire month. This gave him a chance to experiment with the medium and learn from his own work, and in his project recap he states “I have found, especially in recent days, that as I’m shooting and conceiving a shot, I see the potential impact of the composition in black & white.”
FOCUS ON CONTRAST
Black & white photography is about the black, the white, and all the tones in between. The human eye is built to pick up two things: light intensity and color.When you remove the color, your eyes become more sensitive to the light intensity. We naturally pick out areas of contrast — it’s how we distinguish one thing from another. As a black & white photographer, your main objective is to make your point with shades of gray. Use contrast to show your onlookers what’s important and what’s not. Seek out scenes that naturally show signs of high contrast, and your black & white photos will be more compelling right from the start.
When post-processing a black & white image, the use of Photoshop techniques like levels, curves, and layer blends give you a wide variety of output options. In addition to these things, burning and dodging are highly effective methods of improving contrast. They work so well because they allow you to focus the edit on a localized portion of the image without affecting the surrounding areas.
FOCUS ON TEXTURE
Texture is really just a form of contrast, but it is perceived quite differently. If you think about it, texture is the regular or irregular pattern of shadows and highlights at various intensities. Black & white photos really lend themselves to texture because color generally add another layer of complexity, thus masking most subtle textures. Look for areas of interesting texture that can be photographed by zeroing in on specific surfaces and examining them for signs of patterned contrast.
The choices you make in post-processing can really make a difference in the texture too. During the black & white conversion, you can usually pull texture out of otherwise smooth surfaces based on your choice of conversion methods. In digital photos, blues and reds generally contain more noise than greens, so tools like the channel mixer and the black & white adjustment layer in Photoshop can really accentuate those embedded textures.
CAPTURE IN COLOR
This is mainly aimed at digital photographers… If your camera gives you the option of shooting in color or black & white, NEVER shoot in black & white. The camera is really capturing color, then converting to black & white. Photo editing software can do a much better job at the conversion, and you’ll have more flexibility on the output of the final image. It’s really amazing how different a photo can look solely based on the post-processing, so it’s best not to limit yourself before the photo even makes it out of the camera.
The one exception to this rule is if you wanted to use the black & white capture to give you a preview of what the scene might look like as a monochrome image. It may help you identify good black & white scenes more immediately, but once you find your shot switch back over to color capture and shoot it again.
USE COLOR FILTERS
Black & white film photographers make use of color filters to change the captured tones in their photographs. Ever see those monochrome images with dark skies and puffy white clouds? That’s not natural; it requires the use of color filtering to produce the desired effect.
Using an actual color filter with a digital camera is perfectly acceptable and it has its merits, but it’s not completely necessary. Software like Photoshop has the ability toapply non-destructive color filters. It also has the ability to produce the same results as a color filter during the black & white conversion. For those of you using Photoshop CS3, you’ll see that the black & white adjustment dialog has several preset filters that can be applied and modified to suit the photo.
So if you’re interested in pursuing a little black & white photography, really think about these things — before, during, and after you shoot. Anybody can produce black & white photos, but it takes a little more thought and skill to produce good black & whites.
Source: http://blog.epicedits.com/2007/11/05/the-top-5-black-white-photography-tips/
Yashica 124G: Some great portrait photos from Flickr
by P@tr!ck
by Pixel Lush
by hurtingbombz
by Pixel Lush
Reasons to love square format image
A Guest post by Andrew S Gibson – author of the new eBook – Square.
Perhaps one of the unintended consequences of digital photography is that it has opened up areas of photography that were previously limited to people that had certain equipment. The square format is a good example – before digital you really needed a 6x6cm format medium camera to exploit it. Sure, you could crop a 35mm negative in the darkroom, but you wouldn’t be able to match the image quality of a medium format negative.
Digital cameras have changed all that. You have the choice of using your camera’s native aspect ratio (a rectangle) or you can crop to a different aspect ratio in post-processing. Some cameras also let you use the square format in-camera – displaying a cropped square on the Live View feed or in the viewfinder if it has an electronic viewfinder.
Apart from the fact that you can, why would anyone crop to a square? Here are five reasons to love the square format:
1. You can Improve the Composition of Some of your Images
Good composition is often about simplifying – eliminating any superfluous elements in your images so that you’re just left with the important stuff. You should be doing this when you compose a photo in the first place, but you can also do it by cropping in post-processing. If you crop from a 35mm to a square, you’re shaving off a third of the image, leaving the strongest two-thirds.
This is a creative exercise that you can carry out on photos you already have. It’s a great way of improving images that have too much empty space either side of the main subject. It’s worth taking some time to go back over old images and see if you can improve them by cropping to a square. The above image is an example of a good photo that became better once it was cropped to a square.
Another approach is to take photos that you intend to crop to the square format. Because you are aware that you will crop the image afterwards, you can take care to compose it in a way that suits the square format. This is something I’ve started to do more often this year as I’ve become more aware of the creative possibilities of the square format.
2. Composition is Different within the Square Frame
If you’ve read Beyond Thirds you’ll already know that I don’t place much stock in the ‘rule-of-thirds’. In the square format you can forget the rule-of-thirds altogether. It depends on what you’re photographing, but placing the subject in the centre of a square frame, or close to the edge, often works surprisingly well.
The other elements that become more prominent in the square format are shapes and line. Look for shapes – such as triangles, squares and circles in your subject when you compose your subject. Lines also become stronger as they pull the viewer’s eye through the frame.
The photo above of a dandelion utilises shape well – the flower head makes a nice white circle and the stalk is a line that leads the viewer’s eye right to it.
3. Black and White Square Photos are Beautiful
I think of the square format as the fine art photographer’s format. There are lots of fine art photographers that shoot almost exclusively in black and white and use the square format. In black and white, shapes and line become more prominent without the distraction of colour – black and white seems to make the most attractive elements of the square format even stronger.
Take a look at the work of Josef Hoflehner to see what I mean. And really look at his work. Josef’s work is deceptively simple, yet he has a remarkable eye for tone and composition. How does he use shape? Tone? Line? Contrast? Negative space? Analysing the work of photographers that you admire, then applying what you learn to your own photography, is a good way of learning.
4. Instagram
This only applies to photographers with an iPhone or iPad, but I really love the Instagram app. I like to use it on my iPad, but I don’t use the iPad’s camera – I transfer photos that I’ve already taken and use Instagram to process and crop them.
For those of you not familiar with the app, it crops the image to a square and then applies a creative filter (the image above is a good example of what it can do). It’s surprising how much the creative filters can improve your images. To get the best out of Instagram, you need to use it with your strongest images – don’t fall into the trap of using it to try and improve weak images.
5. Toy Cameras
Toy cameras like the Holga and Diana create square format images with a unique look. Who would have thought that you could make beautiful images with inexpensive plastic lenses and cameras? Well, you can – as long as you’re prepared to use film.
But there is an alternative for digital camera owner; you can now buy Holga oe Diana lenses for your digital SLR. You can take advantage of the quirky nature of these plastic optics, but with all the advantages of digital photography. I bought a plastic Holga lens for my camera from Holga Direct and I’m delighted with results.
Conclusion
Square format photography is very enjoyable. I like it because it has helped me create some beautiful images, and I am using the square format more and more for black and white photography. The square format has taught me lessons about composition that I also apply to other photos, so the benefits extend into every area of my photography.
I like the square format so much that I’ve written an eBook about it called Square. It explores all the concepts in this article, and more, in greater depth and shows you how to use the square format with your camera. It also has a couple of case studies with two talented film photographers, Matt Toynbee and Flavia Schaller, who use square format cameras. Square is available now from my website for just $9.97 USD.
Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/five-reasons-to-love-the-square-format#ixzz24dzJXUxU
TLRgraphy 