Black and white beach photography can be a really cathartic experience. Standing on the rocks hearing the crash of waves, feeling slight spray whilst watching the sun come down, can help the day’s worries just evaporate! After this blissful experience, you get home hoping for some gorgeous black and white masterpieces that you envisaged, but sometimes you end up with grey, lifeless images.

Let us show you 5 techniques that we use to get around this problem, when doing black and white beach photography. These will ensure that every time you go down to the sea, you will come back with unique photographs to be proud of.

During our recent trip to Cape Town, South Africa, Ally and I took a day trip to a tiny beach called Slangkop. (This means Snake Head in Afrikaans.) If you’re looking to go there, it is right next to a small village called Kommetjie. There is a beautiful old lighthouse there that dates back to 1919. This 33m high round cast iron tower looks so interesting from a distance that we hoped to get some amazing images of the area. We arrived mid afternoon and stayed until just after sunset. As you will see from the images in this article, the lighthouse was probably the least interesting thing to photograph, mainly because it closes at 3pm and is surrounded by a huge ugly electrified and barbed wire fence.

Why use black and white photography

One of the joys of photographing along the shoreline are the subtle colours one gets from the turquoise of the sea to the orange of the setting sun reflected off of rocks to the pale tan sand. It’s a watercolour painter’s dream, so why would we want to give up these amazing subtleties for a black and white image? There are a number of reasons, but the main ones we find are it forces you to look at the shapes of your scene and we end up with much better compositions.

Black and white can give you incredible dramatic images that any colour can dilute.

Everybody has taken photographs of the beach. Sofor your images to stand out you need to present them with something that’s not been seen hundreds of times before. Black and white photography will do this.

The 5 top techniques we use

1: Photography in the Golden Hour

The golden hour is the hour before sunset and after sunrise. It gives colour photographs a beautiful soft warm colour cast that is really desirable but what does it do for black and white photography? Well, we love shooting in the golden hour because the lighting gives objects a wonderful 3D feel with long and dark shadows. All the textures on rocks just come to life and even sand takes on a new textured look.

2: Silhouettes and contre-jour lighting

Of course the golden hour is perfect for photographing contre-jour. For a more in-depth look at contre-jour look at our article here.  By photographing into the sun you will find the scene take on new and interesting shapes as the light just touches the rim of objects, throwing the rest of the object into darkness. With large areas of darkness you can create mystery in your images as it leaves the viewer’s brain to fill in the details. Be careful with the extreme lighting as it’s really easy to totally blow out (lose all detail) in your highlights. If you’re photographing in an auto mode be careful as your camera could be lying to you by giving you the wrong exposure. Exposure compensation is your best friend in these situations.

There are so many interesting things on the beach to photograph and some of them take on a totally different look and feel when photographed as a silhouette. The stacked rocks have almost an alien world feel to them.

3: Details, details, details

The shoreline is like a fractal. The more closely you look, the more detail you see. Worlds within worlds. So why just photograph the big world everybody else is doing. Look at the details and sometimes some of the most interesting landscapes can be found there. Rocks and sand have so many beautiful textures on them but our favourite textures are to be found on old metal. When doing texture photography we look for old rusted structures wherever we go as they always give wonderful detailed images.

4: Polarising the light and filters

One of the must have filters for any outdoor photography is a polarising filter. A polariser will do so many things to both colour as well as black and white images. For our black and white beach photography we use it mostly to darken the sky. However it is also very useful for getting rid of reflections.

Slangkop lighthouse with a dark sky created by the polarising filter

The other filters we use in beach or any landscape photography are red or orange filters. This filter also darkens the sky (black and white photography only). We always have a UV filter on our lens to protect it as well. The protection is not just about damage either. Sea spray on your lens will degrade the contrast of the image and its so much easier to swap to a clean filter halfway through your shooting rather than trying to clean a lens in sandy sea spray conditions.

Be wary however of ‘stacking’ multiple filters on your lens. Unless they are the very expensive multi-coated variety, you will lose quality especially when photographing contre-jour. With wide-angle lenses you will also be adding a vignetting effect.

5: Neutral Density Filters for misty movement

Another technique is to use a long exposure to get a misty water movement. An ND filter will cut the light coming through your lens allowing you to do really long exposures that give the water a misty ethereal effect.

Don’t forget to use a stable tripod for these long exposures. Even the smallest bit of wind can cause subtle movement and ruin an otherwise perfect image. Usually, we try to put the tripod on rocks or really hard compacted sand to keep it totally steady.

If you are using film be aware of your exposure and reciprocity law failure and compensate accordingly. Depending on your exposure time you might even end up doubling the length of exposure to compensate. If you are not aware of reciprocity law then just bracket your exposures like mad.

Extra techniques – safety for you and your camera

The coastline and your camera don’t mix very well. Salty sea-spray will corrode your pride and joy so very quickly. Keep it out of the spray or sea mist as much as possible. This might mean keeping it in a bag when you’re not shooting or, if the spray is really fierce then put a clear plastic bag over it. (The ones you get for keeping food in work well.) Just cut a hole for the lens.

Be aware of changing lenses in areas where sand is blowing around. Once again sand and sensors don’t play well together.

Be aware of your surroundings. When we were photographing at Slangkop, I was so busy with an image that I didn’t see a very shifty looking person hovering around eyeing our stuff. Fortunately Ally was there, and some locals arrived too, so he scuttled off but if I was on my own things could have been very different.

Extra techniques – what settings should I use for best beach photography

We are doing a whole series on aperture, shutter and exposure compensation articles in this blog but the main thing about beach photography is that your camera can be fooled very easily. The bright sand and reflections off the sea make the camera think that there is more light than there really is so your images can turn out slightly underexposed. If in doubt, bracket a lot.

370,000 miles of unique possibilities

Around our planet there’s approximately 370,000 miles of coastline from stunning long sandy beaches to ragged cliffs. There is just so much variety and so many options to create unique and exciting images. Be safe, look for the less obvious and craft your own black and white beach photography and masterpieces every time.

The post Black and White Beach Photography appeared first on ImageExplorers.

I often get asked about free online Photoshop and my stock answer is that if you can’t afford or don’t want to pay Adobe the monthly rental then there are a few options.

My first option would be to use Affinity Photo that has a one off fee (around £40) or download Gimp to your computer (free). I very rarely recommend an online version for serious work but recently I had seen Photopea, (not made by Adobe) and was intrigued. Could this software actually work like Photoshop but be free and online? I decided to set myself a challenge. Could I do this whole post’s images in Photopea?

What is it?

Photopea is a simplified clone of Adobe Photoshop that works in your browser. You simply go to photopea.com and there it is. Choose File and open an image from your computer. When you’re done editing just save as a Photoshop compatible PSD file or export as a jpg, png etc. It saves these files to your download folder.

The Photopea (Online free Photoshop) interface

Let’s start with Raw

Not wanting to overload the browser I started with a 12mp file. I wanted to see Photopea’s Raw file ability so I had a dng file (digital negative file) ready to go. To say the Raw file settings were sparse would be an understatement.  5 sliders! Basic temperature, Tint, exposure, brightness and contrast. That is it! At least there is a histogram.

Not a great start; however it must be said that at least it did open the Raw dng file.

Basic Raw settings

Photopea interface

The interface you are presented with looks very similar. Mmm.. I can see the Adobe lawyers getting all hot under the collar. Anybody with any Photoshop abilities will feel right at home. The tools are similar, the layers look the same and even the masks and adjustment layers have the Adobe look.

Look… It’s online Photoshop! Except it’s not

Start with the adjustment menu to alter the contrast with a curve. Well it works but it’s very basic.

Curves in Photopea are minimal

Non-destructive editing

I wasn’t holding out much hope when I went to the adjustment layers. I thought I would try out a very simple brightness and contrast but it actually worked very well. I was surprised. I even had a mask to use to stop the adjustment affecting the sky. Things are looking up. I was getting into it now and just copied the adjustment layer like I would in Photoshop by dropping it on the new layer button. Yes! that worked too. Better and better.

Adding an adjustment layer

Couldn’t stop now. I had to add a gradient adjustment layer and mix it with the layer below to hide the white using the blend mode. See our tutorial on how to make the sky dark in a photo. If you’re not used to layers and masks, see our post on using these with our textures tutorial and the Vatican multi-image edit tutorial.

This is the colour final version

Why stop now!? So on to converting it to Black and White to finish off the whole thing.

Changing the image size has very basic options – Bilinear or nearest neighbour as interpolation option.

Still, it didn’t look too bad.

After using the crop tool I exported out as a jpg.

The finished image

See what we think makes a good black and white image.

Conclusions

So how was it? Well there are good and bad.

First the good.

• It’s free
• It works on a browser so both Mac and PC
• The software doesn’t take up room on your drive
• You can use it on an iPad. We got it to work on an iPad mini
• It strips the software down to the bare basics
• Even the brush size keyboard shortcuts using the [ and ] keys worked. (See our top 10 Photoshop shortcuts).
• You can save as PSD files and all the functionality is still there in Photoshop

Now the not so good

• The Raw settings are too stripped down
• It struggled a few times and things slowed right down. I made sure I had no other tabs on the browser open but it still occasionally froze
• The crop tool was a bit clunky. I struggled with it as it kept freezing.
• The brush was a bit difficult to control.
• The interpolation options are a bit sparse and as this is an online version I suspect it will be used for a lot of resizing.

So would I use it again?

If I was totally stuck without Photoshop or Affinity Photo then yes I would, but I’d always go for a non-online browser based option first.

Would I recommend it?

Only if you are going to do image manipulation a few times a year and really can’t afford Affinity or Photoshop or you need to do some quick manipulation on your tablet.

I do have high hopes for Photopea though (or any free online photoshop). It can only get better and faster and as a free web resource it is actually very good.

Give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

The post Free online Photoshop? appeared first on ImageExplorers.

“BUT MY CAMERA IMAGES ARE SHARP! Why should I sharpen my photographs?” This is a common question I hear all the time as an Adobe Photoshop trainer and lecturer. The other question that goes with this one is, “Why do ‘Pro’ images always look so much crisper than mine? I have the same camera?” I Know it seems very odd that when you have spent so much money on a camera and lens with awesome autofocus systems that you might still have to sharpen your photos. Fear not, for we will explain all! Firstly we’ll look at the why and then the how.

If you are reading this article on a phone you might need to zoom in to see the subtle details of sharpening on the images

Why your photographs need sharpening

Before sharpening

More skin, hair and violin texture after sharpening

Most (but not all) digital cameras have a filter in front of the sensor to deliberately, slightly blur the image recorded on the sensor. REALLY!!! This filter is called an anti-aliasing filter and it helps prevent moiré problems. This unsightly moiré effect can come about when photographing regular patterns for example on a subject’s clothing. The anti-aliasing (AA) filter helps to prevent this by slightly blurring the image.

If your camera is set to give you jpg images then the camera automatically adds some software sharpening to the image. If you are producing Raw files then it is up to you to add sharpening to the Raw file.

Which camera makes have this ant-aliasing filter?

Well most of the big brands have cameras with and without AA filters. Nikon, Fujifilm, Pentax, Canon and Sony tend to not have AA filters on the ‘Pro’ camera lines. Leica does not have AA filters on theirs. There are both good and bad things about not having AA filters though. No AA filter = sharper images but potentially moiré problems. AA filter = poss weird patterns on fabric

No AA filter – no sharpening then?

Err No. Sharpening images is still used on non AA filter images as it can really give your image a bit more ‘punch’.

So how does sharpening work?

With software

Software sharpening finds the sharp edges in your photograph and increases the contrast of the edges, This gives the image more defined edges and a look of being sharper.

With film

Photographic film can be processed in such a way as to increase the edge sharpness around objects. This is called the Mackie Line effect. One way to achieve this effect when processing Black and White film is to not agitate the film too often (maybe just once every 30 seconds). The developer gets depleted in the large areas but can work more in the other areas creating a sharper line between the exposed and less or unexposed areas. Find out more about choosing a film camera and loading film here.

How to sharpen in Photoshop

Every photographer has their own way of sharpening images. Some more convoluted than others. We’d like to show you just the 2 main ones.

Using the Unsharp mask

When your image is all resized and ready to print or go to web, open the filters menu in Adobe Photoshop. (We’re using Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud) version 2019.) So that this sharpening is not destructive we’re going to start by making the image into a Smart Object. Select Filters and choose Convert for Smart Filters.

Then go to the Filters menu again, choose Sharpen and then Unsharp Mask.

Unsharp mask amount set to 100

Settings in Unsharp mask amount set too high

The Unsharp radius set too high

Keep the threshold and the radius very low – maybe in the 0.5 – 2 and 1 – 3 area respectively and then adjust the amount to taste. Most people work in the range between 50% and 150%

The lower the threshold, the fewer areas it will mask out and it will apply the sharpening to everything. If you find details that you don’t want sharpened being affected then increase the threshold.

The radius is the area either side of the edge details that gets affected. Use a very small radius on low resolution images.

Paint on the mask of the unsharp mask smart filter to hide the effect

Using a High pass filter

Th High Pass filter method is another sharpening technique that many people prefer. In Photoshop, duplicate the image layer by dragging the layer onto the new layer button in the Layers panel. Select the top layer, convert it to a Smart Object to make the filter non-destructive, and then go to the Filter menu, choose Other and High Pass.

High Pass on layer, finds and adds contrast to edges

In the High Pass settings use a low setting eg. 1.2. You can always change this later if you like, by double clicking the High Pass filter on the layer.

Change the Layer Mode to Overlay and adjust the opacity and High Pass filter to taste. If there are areas you wish to not be sharpened just paint them out on the layer mask.

Overlay mode on layers panel to mix the high pass with the non sharpened bottom layer

Tip: The best way to see your sharpening is to view the image at 100% zoom. (In the View menu choose 100%)

Too much of a good thing?

A little too much sharpening has made an unsightly line around the castle 

Be aware that not all images need sharpening and it’s really easy to overdo the sharpening on your photographs. Try to only sharpen areas that need it and mask out the bits that look overdone. That said, if you have never used these techniques you will be pleasantly surprised at the amazing results you get. Go forth and create awesome crisp images when you sharpen your photos.

The post Why you should Sharpen your photos appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Occasionally, in your photographic life, you will find that creativity comes to a grinding halt. A bit like writers’ block! You are bored of looking at super sharp, over-saturated, perfectly grainless travel images and your creative soul longs for something more. As amazing as digital is, it can be too perfect and our humanity likes imperfections. Of course, maybe you just want to try something different. Possibly you yearn for analogue film days but have a digital camera, or sometimes a specific subject just cries out for the vintage look. Whatever the case, we would like to show you how to reinvigorate your photography with 5 professional techniques to make a photo look old.

Here are the techniques we will cover so grab your software and follow along.

1 – Sepia or blue tone (cyanotype) using black and white Adjustment layers
2 – Split toning using raw files or raw filters
3 – More accurate tone types using Gradient Maps
4 – Adding grain
5 – Adding a photo border

What software can you use?

Although for these techniques to make a photo look old are done in Photoshop Creative Cloud, you can do most of them in any other software. We recommend either Photoshop, Lightroom or Affinity Photo, but there are so many different image editors available to you at different price points. Most tend to work in a similar way and use the same terminology.

1 – Sepia or Cyanotype tone using Black and White Adjustment layers

What is it?

A Black and White Adjustment layer allows you to non-destructively colourise your image to a tone approximating a Sepia or Cyanotype photograph.

How to do it

• Open your image in Photoshop. It doesn’t matter if it is a colour, black and white or even a scan. You will need to then apply an Adjustment layer so go to the Layers panel and click the new Adjustment layer at the bottom. From the list chose Black and White.
• Click the tint button and choose a suitable colour.
• If you are adding this adjustment layer to a colour image then adjust the sliders to lighten or darken various colours in the image to taste.

Choose Black & White from the Adjustment drop-down menu

Click the small tint button above the sliders to choose a toning colour

Why are we using an Adjustment layer rather than doing this from the image and adjustments menu? If you use Adjustment layers and save as a PSD file you can always come back and adjust your settings later, as nothing is set in stone. You can also delete or hide the Adjustment layer to get back to your original image.

This black and white tint process enables you to do a very rough approximation of a Cyanotype or a Sepia image. Later in this post we will do a more accurate version of toned images. See our previous post on how to make a digital cyanotype including making the background! 

2 – Split toning using raw files or raw filters

What is it?

Split toning is a technique that allows you to tone the highlights of the image with one colour and the shadows with another.

How to do it

• If you have a Raw file then open the image in the Raw file converter and switch on the Black and White convert button.

Convert colour to black and white in Raw by choosing button in basic tab

• Open the tone tab and lighten the colours to taste.

Adjust sliders to lighten and darken original colours for authentic old vintage photo feel

• Open the split tone tab and choose a colour for the highlights and for the shadows. You can then dial in the saturation and even change the balance so you get more shadow colour or more highlight colour.

Yellow highlights

Blue shadows

Mix of yellow highlights and blue shadows for a greenish look

Mix of yellow and cyan for old photo look of vintage traction engine

A mix of yellow highlights and a reddish  shadow can give a very beautiful warm sepia feel.

To do the same to a non-Raw image, open it in Photoshop and then go to the filter menu and down to Camera Raw. Follow the instructions as above. If you are using this technique to make a photo look old you might wish to convert the image to a smart object first. This means that you can double click the filter on the smart object layer and go into the filter to change any settings.

3 – More accurate tone types using Gradient Maps

What is it?

A Gradient Map allows you to map colours to various tones (light to dark) in an image by applying a gradient with the new colours in. If this last sentence sounded like Geek Speak then just look at the examples to see what we mean.

How to do it

• Open the image in Photoshop and find your layers panel.
• Click the Adjustment layer button at the bottom and choose Gradient Map.
• In the Gradient Maps panel go to the gradient map and choose the drop-down menu and add in the Photographic toning maps.
• Choose a tone to apply to your images.

Choose Photographic Toning from the Gradient Map option menu

Cyanotype gradient colours mapped to image

Gradient map with a heavy sepia so the highlights go orange/brown

Of course you can just go wild

Our favourite tone is the Selenium no 2 tone. See more on Gradient Maps in our how to photograph like Michael Kenna tutorial.

4 – Adding Grain

Why do it

Adding grain can cover a multitude of bad-retouching ‘sins’. It can also augment an image. What it cannot do is to make a bad image better.
We like to add a bit of grain to some digital images to give them a more analogue feel.

How to do it

Grain can be added either in Raw (from the effects tab), from the Raw filter (in Photoshop) or from the add noise option (in the noise filter in Photoshop).

5 – Adding a photo border

A scanned border can make all the difference to the authenticity of your old photo technique. Scan in and old image, put it above your image in the layers panel.

The first thing to do once you have both images open in Photoshop is to drag your toned image into the border image as a layer. (We flattened the toned image before dragging it onto the border image to keep things simple.) We used ‘overlay’ from the Modes drop-down menu in the layers panel to mix the toned image with the border image below.

Here are 2 before and after examples

Original tractor before ageing process

Tractor with old photo look – Zante Greece

Original books before old vintage photo treatment

Original books after old vintage photo treatment

Your own look

These are just a few of the many techniques you can use to age a photo and give it that old treasured image look. We use the Gradient map with Selenium tone on most of our Black and White images to give them a warm feel.
Experiment with these techniques and come up with your own unique look.

The post 5 Professional techniques to make a photo look old appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Waterloo in London, is the busiest railway station in the United Kingdom with a quarter of a million people traveling through it every day. How do we find a secret place in London to photograph, in one of the most crowded cities and areas in Europe? I discovered this place by accident a few years ago while out exploring and have visited to take photographs again many times. Yesterday, Ally and I took our cameras to photograph a secret place in London where she had never been before. Let me tell you about it and how to find it.

What is this secret photographic place?

It’s a tunnel covered in graffiti!
“Really Tim? You expect me to read a post about a grubby road tunnel next to an overcrowded station?”……
Now before you stop reading let me explain a little more …

Banksy tunnel or to give it its correct name Leake Street Arches is an incredible photographic paradise.

It is nicknamed “Banksy tunnel” because the well known street artist called Banksy organised The Cans Festival there in 2008. He invited graffiti artists with stencils to paint their own pieces.

Street Artist hard at work in the Banksy Tunnel unaware of us taking photographs.

Banksy Tunnel is now a spiritual home to some of the best street artists in Europe and the best thing about it is, you can usually find some of them working on a huge piece there. Most of the artists work freehand rather than stencil so the scope for interesting images with artist doing big sweeping movements is immense.

The tunnel is just an amazing photography opportunity for people and textures as none of the artists object to being photographed while they work.

Another Street Artist creating a very large piece. The smell of aerosol spray paint can be overwhelming. We were surprised he wasn’t wearing a mask.

Low light

As this is quite a dark tunnel we put the ISO on the camera up to 1600. A bit grainy but I feel the grain adds to the secret London place feel of the image. It’s grungy, dirty and in your face so the grain seems to work really well. See our post on low-light photography.

The Vaults, Leake Street, London where you can safely photograph a secret place

Is it safe?

Absolutely. Despite what you might read in the press, London is very safe. Unless you go to totally deserted areas at unsociable hours you’re highly unlikely to have any problems. I have been photographing in and around London for the past 25 years and have never once had a problem. Be sensible, and like anywhere in the world don’t flaunt your equipment in dark deserted areas late at night when nobody is about and you’ll be fine.

A bonus not quite so secret place

When I was out exploring areas of London with our son Jethro (excellent Illustrator – see his illustrations here), he took me to this most awesome, quirky and cool little bar/café. It’s just outside the far tunnel exit and is called the Scooter Caffe. You might walk right past it without a second look.

You could walk right by the Scooter Caffe London, Waterloo, and miss a phenomenal experience

Coffee with Jethro (left) and pan of  the interior of the Scooter Caffe, Waterloo, London

The theme of this beautiful grungy bar is old Vespa scooters and all the details that go with them: helmets, number plates and appropriate film posters. Go in and you’ll be rewarded with a unique experience.

The staff are so friendly and whether you have a quick coffee or spend a few chilled hours with several bottles of very good cider (yes I did both), you will be rewarded with some interesting details to photograph.

Lighting is a challenge as there is darkness with neon lights inside but daylight streams through both ends of the building.

Wander down the tiny spiral staircase for more interesting details to photograph. We had a similar issue when photographing Truth Coffee in Cape Town.

Beautiful textures and shapes that you can photograph when you find a secret place 

To quote from the We Are Waterloo website, “It featured in the third Bourne film, Johnny Depp has dropped in for a drink and Ethan Hawke is a regular when he’s in the area.”

Where to find these secret London photography places

When exiting Waterloo station (there are at least 4 main exits) you need to head around to the back of the station. The easiest way is to go out out the front, turn left and find York Road. A very short way down York Road (you’ll see the London Eye on your right) you’ll find Leake street. Turn left into it and after a short walk you’ll be there.

Once you’ve finished creating amazing images and wondering how some artists painted the ceiling, head out the opposite end of the tunnel and turn right into Lower Marsh Road and you’ll see the Scooter Caffe.

Ally inside Scooter Caffe after a long day of photographing a secret place in London

Two secrets for the price of one

If you are just passing through Waterloo station and have some time before you next train or your visiting the London Eye (five mins walk away) be sure to take a tour of the Banksy Tunnel, and once you’ve finished making images there, give your creative soul a treat and head over to the Scooter Caffe. You will not be disappointed.

The post Photograph a secret place in London appeared first on ImageExplorers.

When you walk into a camera store or look at an online photographic shop there are so many filters for black and white photography that you could buy. The problem is, which one?! What actually makes a good black and white photograph and how can I achieve that? Do you buy into a filter “system” or buy individual filters? The people in the store might or might not know which ones are right for your type of photography.

When I first started photography in the days of film (click this link to see the best black and white film for travel photography), I was so overwhelmed by the vast array of filters that I spent a lot of money on buying up as many as possible. My thinking behind this was that it would improve my photography. I am now older and marginally less stupid but I have learned from years of trial and error.

Here are some of our really essential filters for black and white and colour photography as well as our shameful ones!

There are 5 essential filters for black and white photography that every photographer should own. I’d like to show you them now and explain what each one does and why you need it. If you’ve got some time on your hands and want to know tips and geeky explanations on how to convert colour to black and white, then click that << link!

Using Polariser to darken the sky

The UV or Haze or Skylight Filter

The first filter I am going to recommend is one I always buy for any new lens I get. This filter has 2 main reasons to live on your lens.

Firstly: Protection – I can’t count the number of times I have “dinked” the front glass on my lenses.

Sometimes it’s as simple as a quick knock against my belt when carrying the camera. (We use awesome sling type straps that go across your body. Ally swears hers is the best thing ever and is attached to it like an umbilical cord. She uses a Ladies Black Rapid. I have a Sun Sniper.) I once scratched my Nikon lens coating when putting the lens cap back on the lens. Having  just finished photographing, the rain was about to bucket down, and I was in a hurry. This does not excuse my not having a protector UV filter on the lens.

A filter is also easier to clean than a lens element. I have even dipped mine in water to wash off salt or dust after photographing waves or deserts.

Pro Tip: When photographing in areas that really dirty up your lens (like sea spray) carry a spare filter and change filters when the first gets dirty. It’s faster than trying to clean a lens in an inhospitable environment.

Whenever I buy a new lens the very next thing I buy is a UV filter. $50 to $100 for a high quality filter that doesn’t seem to do much might seem extortionate but if it saves the very soft (and very expensive) lens coating from just one scratch it will be worth it.

Secondly: Sharper and more defined details in the background – A UV filter cuts out the UV light and cuts through the haze making distance objects seem clearer.  With film it is more important to use a UV filter because film is extremely sensitive to UV light. However, digital sensors are generally less sensitive to UV.

This filter works the same with both colour and black and white photography.

Lastly, the UV haze filter is not to be confused with the UV transmitting filter. This only allows ultraviolet light to pass through the lens and blocks out all the other visible light spectrum.

See more useful photography articles here

The graduated filter (Grad)

The graduated filter is the next one in the list, for this filters for black and white photography post. A graduated filter is a neutral density filter that gradually fades to clear. The reason for this is that most skies are darker than the land so the graduated filter darkens the sky but not the land. See more explanations on this with our exposure compensation post, and ‘why your camera lies to you’!

Round screw or system grad filter?

These filters come in either a round screw in version or as a “system” version where you attach a filter holder to the front of the lens and then slot in the square filter of choice. The advantage of this type of filter is that you can slide the filter up or down depending on the amount of darkening you require. The other advantage is you buy different size adaptor rings for the system types that means you don’t have to fork out for multiple filters, only new adaptor rings. Both types of filter allow you to spin them around.

Graduated filters for black & white film photography

The Grad filters come in various strengths of darkening. Buy some cheap ones to experiment with first before spending a lot on one.

In my young college days these Cokin filter systems were all the rage, and from my extensive Cokin system, the grad was used more than anything.

While this filter works just as well in colour photography as it does in black and white there are a few other grads that work in colour too. I used to use a tobacco (orange/brown) to get warmer low sun photographs or a blue/purple to get more interesting cloudy skies.

The Neutral density filter (ND)

One of our favourite creative filters for black and white photography is the Neutral Density filter. It reduces the amount of light coming through the lens thus giving you longer exposures that you are unable to get in bright light even with an ISO of 50.

Why would you want longer exposures?

It will capture movement rather than freezing it. This could be either water, people, vehicles, clouds or anything that moves. On water this produces an ethereal misty effect and with people it can produce water-like blurs. It is very effective if some people are moving and some totally still. We have used this filter a number of times for dramatic effect on water. See our post on how we got on (or not) when we first used our ND filter recently.

Just make sure you have a very sturdy tripod as it’s so easy to get a blurry image with even the smallest bit of camera shake during a 30 second exposure. See our tutorial on how to photograph with an ND filter.

This filter works just as well in colour as in black and white photography.

Single colour filters for Black and white film

Black and white film uses a full range of the visible colour spectrum to create a full range of tones on your black and white negative. What a single colour filter does is to stop some of those colours from reaching the film and thereby making that area darker. For example, the filter we need to use to darken the sky would be one that stops blue reaching the film. Yellow, orange and red colours are opposite blue and so do this very effectively. A blue filter would darken reds and make the blues appear lighter. See our post on how to darken skies for more details on single colour filters.

Filter system of single colours for black and white photography

Buy a full range of cheap filters and try them out to see what you get before committing more money to them.

The Polarizing filter

There are 2 main uses for polarizing filters, reducing reflections and darkening skies.

Here is how it works. Light reflected from a non-metallic surface becomes polarized. A polarizing filter allows light to pass in only one direction. This allows us to reduce reflections on non-metallic objects.

Light from the sky is also polarized, so a polarizing filter will polarize the light and reduce how much light enters the camera. As a result this will make the sky dark in a photo.

Photograph taken without and with polarizing filter

A polarizer will darken down blue sky but not affect clouds. (The effect is most prevalent on the area of sky that is at 90 degrees from the sun – Look at the sun – carefully – and then the darkest sky will be at 90 degrees.) It will also reduce reflections which can make trees etc seem rather vivid in colour. To use the polarizer just turn the filter until the sky goes dark or the reflections disappear.

A few things to be aware of with polarizing filters

This polarizing filter technique will work with both film and digital, colour and black and white. In colour it also increases the saturation of many objects by reducing reflections.

There are 2 types of polarizer. A linear and a circular. A circular CPL polarizer is best for modern cameras as linear polarizers can affect exposure meters and autofocus adversely.

Filters can create so many effects and as we have discovered in our photographic adventures, not all are good. With these 5 essential filters to start your collection off though, you just can’t go wrong. What do you think of our choice of essential filters for black and white photography? Are there any you think we should add to the list? Do you have an embarrassing collection worse than ours? Let us know in the comments below.

Above all else, just go out and create photographs that make you happy.

See our Top 10 Essential Photoshop shortcuts.

Tim’s Adobe and Affinity courses

Click here to get huge money off savings on Tim’s Udemy courses for Photoshop on the iPad and Affinity Photo v2.

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More than once, Ally and I have arrived in a new town to photograph, all prepared and excited however things don’t go always go according to plan. The weather is dire, the scene itself is spectacularly awful due to building work, there are too many tourists etc. I’m sure you have all felt this at various stages. Don’t give up! What we do in these situations is to do texture photography. Even surrounded by hundreds of tourists in a building zone during awful weather we can always find some texture detail to light up our photographic souls.

On the surface of it, many people think of textures as just background images. Filler photos to put text on top of but a beautiful texture is a joy to behold in its own right. Think of them a “mini” landscapes that very few people stop to look at and it will bring you hours of photographic pleasure.

Wales snow in sand texture

Dubrovnik roof texture

Church wood and stone texture in cyanotype style

The other use we have for texture photography is to create something that we montage or blend with other images in Photoshop. See the how-to further down this post.

Using layer for texture photography on HMS Victory hull

What equipment do you need?

We just use whatever we have with us and as we said in our bios, we travel very light. I have listed a few things below that could be helpful if you have them with you.

Ally photographing wheel textures on a UK quarry

Macro lenses for close-up

You don’t really need any special equipment to photograph textures unless you want to go really close-up in which case you might need a macro lens. These are lenses that are optically corrected for close-up photography and most of them allow closer focusing than normal lenses do.

Tripods

We find a tripod really useful if we need more depth of field with longer shutter speeds so we can keep the camera steady for that all important sharpness that we try to get. Another use for the tripod is to help compose the perfect image. Having the camera on the tripod allows us to keep the camera composed on one area while looking around to see if there are any other areas that look better without losing our original composition. This seems ridiculous, but with close-up texture photography you’ll be surprised how easy it is to lose that perfect picture, as there is so much detail to take in.

Filters

Filters can be really useful. A polarizing filter can get rid of reflections and boost your colour saturation. A single coloured filter on black and white film can lighten or darken the same or opposite colours. See our post on how to make the sky dark in a photo for more details about these techniques. Even though there probably won’t be any sky in your texture photograph, the same principles apply to other colours. So, a green filter will lighten greens in black and white film photography etc. Of course, you can always do this in Photoshop or Affinity Photo when editing your images created on a digital camera.

Texture photography on old Bristol War Department  tanker train

What to photograph

Just look around you with a critical eye. Texture photography takes in anything that has a texture, so from rough walls to smooth building marble, tree trunks to old rusty metal, there are just so many photographs to create. Ally and I love finding old buildings with weather distressed wood where the paint is peeling and the sun has bleached the colour.

Texture on South African Railway train

Old rusted farm equipment left out in fields or old trains that we come upon while walking, always yields some beautiful textures.

Don’t forget wave and sand textures

Black and white or colour photography?

This depends on what you have with you. If we are photographing with black and white film loaded, when we come upon textures we will be looking for textures that lend themselves to black and white and try to ignore the colour in the scene. (A good tip is to look at the scene through a coloured filter as this removes the multiple colours you see and allows you to concentrate on the all-important texture shapes.)

When using colour film, we look for contrasting or sympathetic hues.

Digitally you can do whatever you like. My (Tim) Sony mirrorless A7R camera has an option to view the scene in black and white through the viewfinder but it still records a full colour Raw file in case I change my mind later. I really like this feature, not just for textures, as it enables me to concentrate on the shape and texture in an image and not get distracted by the colour.

Process

As I mentioned earlier, a texture photograph can be a beautiful image on its own but should you want to incorporate it into a different image it can really bring the image to life. I mixed the photograph of the Lord Nelson ship, the HMS Victory, moored in Portsmouth in the UK with a texture photograph of side detail of the ship. This was done in Photoshop by putting the texture layer on top of the ship layer, reducing the opacity, masking out the areas I didn’t want and then experimenting with various layer modes until I found the one I liked. I used Soft Light however my usual go-to layer modes are Multiply (which hides the lighter parts of a layer) or Overlay (which gives a really increased contrast mix).

Texture photograph on ship for use in final image

Using layers with Soft Light mode for texture photography

I started this post by making out that texture photography is something you do if you can’t do ‘real’ photography due to unforeseen circumstances, but in reality, photographing textures can be an extremely satisfying process and yield some incredible images. Whether for use in a mixed layer image or as a beautiful image in its own right, you will find you can fill your photographic soul with texture goodness. Give it a go and, like us, you will be hooked on textures.

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Have you ever seen beautiful old photographs with a blue tone and wondered how you could create the same? A romantic cyanotype photo can look so stunning yet is so easy to do digitally. Let me take you through the process and have you creating an amazing cyanotype photo in minutes. It’s a bit messy but oh so worth it.

Traditionally, a cyanotype photo print is usually created using ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide chemicals. The original process was invented by an astronomer, Sir John Herschel, around 1839. Of course, this was and still is a very messy process requiring coating paper with chemicals. This paper is then allowed to dry and then contact-printed (using your negative) onto the paper using a UV lamp or sunlight. It is washed and then dried. Lots of trial and error and not to mention cost. I want to show you how to get the same result digitally. It would be a shame however not to get your hands a little dirty so the first part of the cyanotype photo in digital will still require a bit of mess.

Some totally useless geeky info

Copies of architectural plans were named ‘blueprints’ because they originally used the Cyanotype process resulting in blue prints – now you too can impress your friends…

The preparation process or, as I like to call it, “Woo-hoo – I’m 5 again”

Ink, heavy duty paper and a brush is all you really need. I poured some ink onto the paper and painted it, making sure not to be too neat with the edges. When it had dried, I scanned the painted page in at a high resolution. I use 600 ppi at A4 as this translates into 300 ppi at A3 size. You can always photograph the paper if you don’t have a scanner. (Just make sure the camera is parallel to the inked paper.)

Cyanotype photo process – preparing the paper

Let’s get toning

While traditionally a cyanotype is Prussian blue and white, you can also achieve a slight yellow in the highlights by bleaching and toning. This split tone look is the one I am going for here.

Open your chosen image in either Adobe Photoshop Raw, Lightroom or Affinity Photo. I will be demonstrating in Photoshop Raw.

Original Image

After you have got your settings for lightness, darkness and shadow detail correct, you will need to click on the black and white photo button. Of course you can then still lighten and darken certain areas with the Black and White control sliders.

Converted to Black and White

Next step is to choose the toning tab. I added a small amount of yellow in the highlights, and more blue in the shadows.

Split tone sliders in raw for cyanotype colour

With Cyanotype photo colour tone

Creating the digital painted frame look

Open up the scanned image in Adobe Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Bring in your toned image. Drag or copy/paste the scanned inked paper onto the toned image.

Paste Painted paper scan onto cyanotype photo

Now for the magic … set the paper layer mode to Screen. Ta-da. A beautiful cyanotype photo with a hand painted paper edge replicating hand-made sensitised paper.

Set layer to screen for Cyanotype photo emulsion look

Useful Geeky Info about Modes

Simply put, the Screen mode hides the black on the layer. It is the opposite of Multiply which hides the whites.

Cyanotype photo with emulsion paint effect

A Reversed Background

The reversed background is nothing like a Cyanotype photo but still quite cool. If you wished to have the image look like it was painted onto a black background you could invert the paper layer and then set the paper layer mode to Multiply.

Original paper layer as used in cyanotype print

Paper layer as used in cyanotype print inverted

Convert mode to multiply for cyanotype on black paper

Variations on the theme

This Cyanotype photo technique has so many variations when it is done digitally. Why not try painting on various surfaces to get interesting textures on you photographs. Create other interesting split tones or even use it on full colour images. As always remember. A Black and White toned image will not rescue a boring photograph but a good photograph can be made even better with sympathetic tones. Mostly, have fun.

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Before we look at what makes a good black and white photo let us first see why we want to create black and white photos. There are so many reasons why we would create a black and white over a colour image and here are just a few. It could be that we’re looking for a certain cool and modern minimalist style. We might be going for a traditional classic photography look. There might even be times when the colour is too overwhelming or awful that we feel the need to remove it. Whatever the reason we need to understand what makes a good black and white photo so that our images look amazing.

What can colour do that Black and white can’t?

Colour is a great mood changer. It can add a sense of mood into an image that black and white just can’t do. Just look at the terminology we use when talking about colour. Warm colours, cool colours. The colour in the image doesn’t have a temperature but our brains ascribe certain feelings to certain colours. Red equates to warmth, comfort, passion etc. Blue equates to cold, loneliness, distance.

Contrasting colours can also augment areas and help to lead the eye around an image. Have a look at these 2 images of the Bugatti car grill below. In the colour image the red logo is the most important feature that your eye is drawn to. In the black and white image our eye fights between the circular logo and the triangle one.

The red colour in the Bugatti grill is what your eye is drawn to

In the black and white version, the eye is drawn towards the teal logo shape

So how can we make our Black and White photos look awesome then?

We have a number of tools at our disposal. Using a combination of these can create a very powerful image. I have listed three of the most important ones below but there are a number of others you will discover yourself.

Shape

Our eyes are normally drawn to very clear shapes. Triangles have a particular power to attract our attention but any shape will still add to what makes a good black and white photo.

In the colour image of the Bugatti dashboard and steering wheel, you can see that your eye fights for attention between the steering wheel and the blue of the car body, but with the black and white image our eye just goes straight in to the most important shape that is the logo on the steering wheel.

On the Bugatti dashboard, your eye fights for attention between the blue body and the yellow wood

In this black and white version, the background blue doesn’t distract the eye from the dashboard and wheel and the logo shape is more obvious

Light verses dark

Where colour images use contrasting colours to differentiate areas in a photograph, in black and white photography we can use light and dark areas. Lighter areas with interesting contrast and shapes just scream out ‘look at me’. Darker areas and less detail tend to make the brain work too hard to see the detail so it automatically goes back to the lighter, easier to ‘read’ areas. A contrasting shape will grab the viewer’s attention as easily as a contrasting colour can.

The eye is drawn towards the lighter parts and doesn’t spend much time in the dark shadows

Texture

When we look at what makes a good black and white photo, one of the really important weapons we have in our armoury is texture. Texture is the one thing that can really give a black and white image punch. It gives the eye something to hold on to.

Texture is so much more apparent in black and white photos than in colour. Use it to your advantage.

You can see how the texture in the roof really jumps out in the image of the steam traction engine compared to the colour version.

The texture on the roof shows up beautifully on the black and white

The texture on the roof of the colour one is not as obvious

Whatever your reason to create an image in black and white over colour, be sure to make the image interesting. In colour photography we can control the viewer’s eyes and emotions with colour but in black and white photos we only have light to dark tones. Finding shapes in your image as well as textures and contrast will help you to lead the viewer’s eyes around your image. This will enable them to see the image as you envisaged it.

We photographed all the images in this post at the Aldham Steam Rally, UK.

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Why would you wish to convert colour to black and white? After all, we all see in colour. There are so many reasons. Maybe the original image has too many clashing colours? It could be that the weird mix of colour balance (eg, a mix of outdoor light with some indoor lighting) in the image is just too time consuming to correct. Or perhaps you want to replicate old film. There are so many other reasons. But, I usually want to convert colour to black and white because it is just so very beautiful and striking.

This staircase that Ally photographed at our AirBnB in Bournemouth looks so much more graphical in black and white.

Here is the original colour version before converting to black and white

Surely you just choose a menu command and it’s done?

Well yes, you can do that but you would be missing out on the joy of controlling the converting of colour to black and white and seeing your image come alive. Most of the quick fix conversions just remove the colour from your image. This, more often than not, leaves a flat dull photograph that requires a lot of dodging and burning or contrast correction to give it more ‘pop’.

The technical explanation that you don’t really need unless you’re a geek or sitting in a coffee shop waiting for a friend!

All colours, whether in the real world or in an image have 3 main values.

1. The actual colour value (Hue)
2. The amount of saturation that colour has (Saturation)
3. And finally, how light or dark that colour is (Luminance / Lightness).

Colour Picker

This can be easily seen in a lot of colour pickers. It is usually referred to as HSL in software adjustments.

Hue, Saturation and Luminance (or Lightness)

So, to convert from colour to black and white, what we want to do is to remove the colour. But we also need to be able to adjust the lightness values of the separate colours individually. This is so we can maybe brighten up that beautiful red sunset cloud whilst at the same time darkening down the blue sky.

But this black and white voodoo never happened in traditional photography I hear you say

Ah, but it did. Here is some more geeky stuff to explain it. Traditional film (silver halide) is sensitive to light. So photographers used varying colour filters to lighten or darken parts of the image they were exposing. One of the most common filters was an orange filter. This absorbed blue light so when the image was exposed, less light from the blue areas got to the film, resulting in a darker blue. This was usually used on landscapes to make the sky go dark and dramatic whilst keeping the clouds white.

One of the greatest traditional landscape photographers, Ansel Adams, used yellow, orange and red filters on his camera to achieve the spectacular images of Yosemite and some of his skies are almost black in the print.

A different technique with film is to use a polarizing filter to darken down the sky.

We are doing the same thing, but with digital we can lighten or darken any colour in the image during conversion.

How the magic is done

In Photoshop or Affinity Photo go to your layers panel and at the bottom find the adjustment layers button. Add a black and white adjustment layer – in here you can lighten and darken the various colours to achieve a spectacular black and white image.

Using black and white to lighten and darken when you convert colour to black and white

Some tips to achieving black and white Zen

Quick tip 1: Try to pre-visualise your black and white image at the creating stage. Many mirrorless cameras let you change your display settings so the display presents in black and white. I use this technique a lot on my Sony A7R. This way, I concentrate more on the shapes and composition as well as the lightness values of the image. This helps stop me getting distracted by the colours. The great thing here is that the camera still records the full colour image, so I can have my cake and eat it!

Quick tip 2: If your camera doesn’t support this function you can take a coloured filter with you. View the scene through the filter to help get rid of distracting colours and enable you to concentrate on the lightness values and shape. Remember to take the filter off the camera before you take the photograph though. Also remember the filter might affect the way you see the values: such as a red filter will make the reds lighter and the blues darker. See our post on essential filters for black and white photography.

Quick tip 3: Geeky stuff alert! If you convert colour to black and white in the Raw file converter, be aware that the default file that opens in Adobe Photoshop will be a single 8-bit channel greyscale file. 8-bit channel images are made up of 256 levels of lightness per channel, from black to white. Therefore, a greyscale image only has 256 shades of grey. An 8-bit RGB image has 3 channels, each with 256 shades. This could mean you get banding in the beautiful graduated sky areas. (I will cover this in detail in a separate post soon.) More importantly, unless you convert the image back to RGB colour, you won’t be able to add colour in Photoshop, even in the form of text. You can do this by going to the Image menu > Modes > RGB colour.

In Summary …

Finally just remember… A boring photograph is still a boring photograph even if it’s converted to black and white. But a good photograph can sometimes become even more stunning once you convert it to black and white.

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