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.

The post What makes a good Black and White photo? appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Very often you may photograph a dramatic sky but when the image is straight out of camera, you look at it and think, I know the sky looked way more interesting that that!

Example!

Dramatic Sky not as dramatic as it should be

Camera Raw to the Rescue

This can, thankfully, be rectified very easily in Adobe Camera Raw. There are a couple of ways of doing this. Today I’m going to concentrate on one using the Gradient tool.

As you saw above the dramatic sky isn’t as dramatic as it should be. So we open up the image in Raw. We choose the Gradient tool (hit G or click the fourth icon from the right from the options along the top), then click and drag down.

We then adjust the settings on the right hand side. The main ones to play with are:

• the Exposure – this will darken it down when you pull the slider to the left.
• the Clarity – this is ‘micro-contrast’ which helps bring out details when pushed to the right (or softens details when pulled to the left.
• the Dehaze tool – this does what it says on the tin and will reduce haze when you push the slider to the right (or bring more haze back in when you pull the slider to the left) upping the contrast and the saturation accordingly.
• the Highlights – where there is a lot of blown outness (new word I just invented) – ie, where there is a lot of sun blowing out the highlights, then pulling the Highlights slider to the left can help bring these back. Be careful not to overdo it as it can go grey.
• the Shadows – this will lighten up the shadows where they may be too dark (pull to the right).

Showing the gradient tool bringing in the details of the dramatic sky

Don’t forget, even if you take a picture on your camera phone or other device, you can still get to the Raw settings by opening it up in Photoshop and going to Filter > Camera Raw Filter.

So, is this cheating?

Absolutely not. As we’ve talked about in a number of other posts, a camera gives an average exposure, (usually weighted towards the centre). This will darken down the whole image dramatically so when you lighten up your exposure in your camera to see the detail in the foreground, this is usually at the expense of a dramatic sky. All we’re doing here is bringing the image back to how you saw it originally. See this before and after tutorial of how we used Camera Raw

Drag the centre line to see the difference

The post The Elusive Dramatic Sky and How to Retrieve Using Camera Raw appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Queen Caroline’s Temple is a classical style summer house overlooking the Long Water, east of Lancaster Walk in Hyde Park, London. When I saw it at sunset I envisaged a beautiful temple with all the detail of the brick work against a blue winter sky. You can see this is not what the original Raw file shows.

Drag the line in the middle to see the before and after image.

Let us see what we can do to fix it.

The Image that I originally created appears to be under exposed. It’s not that this was an error on my part. I deliberately chose this exposure so I could get some detail in the bright area of the sky as I knew I could pull back detail from the shadows. It’s so much harder to get detail from the highlights as once its gone it’s gone. For those used to shooting film it’s like using transparency – shoot for the shadow.

As you can see from the image sequence below I open the image in the raw file converter (similar setting can be done in Lightroom). Why do I use Bridge and not Lightroom? Well I do a lot of work in Adobe Illustrator and Indesign as well as AfterEffects and Bridge works with all these formats. I will do a separate post about the pros/cons of each bit of software.

Original image in raw direct from camera

Straighten Image verticals

My first area to work on is to fix verticals, horizontals and perspective. I then crop the image to the correct ratio.

Crop image

Set up basic lightness and colour balance

Next is to sort out the lightness and darkness of the entire image. I use exposure and shadow and highlights sliders for this. Next comes contrast. I do use curves (not pictured here. I will do an entire post on using curves soon.)but also a lot of micro-contrast called clarity. Next comes colour correction. This needs to be done after sorting out your lightness/darkness as its easiest to correct colour on a well exposed image. I add vibrancy and saturation after this if it needs it.

Use adjustment brush to augment areas

I then go into the adjustment brushes and adjust any areas I think need it. For you traditional film photographers this is like your dodging andd burning stage but with so many more options. You can see how I brought back detail in the building and increased the saturation and contrast in these ares. I did saturation/vibrance and contrast/clarity as these are usually lost in the darker areas of an image.

I finally keep this as raw file so I can always edit it later.

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