[emalvick]

I've been into photography for quite a few years, and with programs like LR, Photoshop, etc. I've experimented with B&W.

The one thing I lack in is in the skills of taking a "black and white" image to begin with. I am hoping that some of you might have suggestions of a good beginners (or even intermediate) type guide to Black and White photography. I'm looking for something more along the composition and exposure point of view rather than the processing side (although processing is ok). There seem to be a lot of books out there and it is tough to know what is good.

As an aside, I love Understanding Exposure, which helped my general photography skills and has even been successful in my current attempts at B&W. My problems these day seem to be more in not "seeing" in black and white. I am often shooting for color and converting to black and white as an afterthought. I'd like to learn to do it the opposite way, and reading always helps.

[Noob]

I've been into photography for quite a few years, and with programs like LR, Photoshop, etc. I've experimented with B&W.

The one thing I lack in is in the skills of taking a "black and white" image to begin with. I am hoping that some of you might have suggestions of a good beginners (or even intermediate) type guide to Black and White photography. I'm looking for something more along the composition and exposure point of view rather than the processing side (although processing is ok). There seem to be a lot of books out there and it is tough to know what is good.

As an aside, I love Understanding Exposure, which helped my general photography skills and has even been successful in my current attempts at B&W. My problems these day seem to be more in not "seeing" in black and white. I am often shooting for color and converting to black and white as an afterthought. I'd like to learn to do it the opposite way, and reading always helps.

Well I take a lot of black and white pictures but I don't think "hey this one is going to be black and white" when I shoot. I decide in post processing which ones work in Black and White and which ones work better in colour.

[pacerr]

Today, playing with B&W conversion software may actually be the easy way gain the experience you seek. Set up a batch conversion in something like Faststone Image Viewer (freeware) and study everything you take for a while.

I don't believe one can easily "get a feel for B&W" without understanding the basics of the processing as well.

I can recommend "Black and White Photography in the Digital Age" by Woroblec & Spence and "Digital Black and White Photography" by Beardsworth for your purposes, both of which you can sample through the on-line Amazon book store.

H2

[wildman]

I'm looking for something more along the composition and exposure point of view rather than the processing side (although processing is ok).

Sounds to me as though you are asking a question of esthetics not a technical question - how to see in black in white before you even press the shutter.

If it was me I would look at the great B/W masters of the past and why their pictures work as B/W images.

This would be a good place to start:
Masters of Photography

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Last edited by wildman; 05-20-2011 at 12:27 AM.

[birdman59]

Remember Blue Blocker sunglasses? When you look through them, they convert everything you see into the same tonal ranges as a B-W grayscale.

[RioRico]

I grew up shooting B&W oh so many aeons ago; I can't recommend any current guides. But I have some suggestions.

There is no single B&W tonality. How a picture looks in monochrome depends on the filters used. Set CUSTOM IMAGE on your camera to B&W, then set the filter to Yellow, and shoot. Now go back into CUSTOM IMAGE and change the filter to Green, Magenta, Cyan, etc, and see how the tones and contrast change. Another way to see filter effects is to shoot RAW. In RAW development on your computer (I use PentaxPhotoLab3) set the image to B&W and try all the different filters.

How filters work: A filter of a specific color will lighten that color and darken others. A Green filter lightens foliage; a Red filter deeply darkens the sky. A Yellow or Orange filter is often considered best for shooting 'normal' scenes. A Blue filter emulates early photo emulsions that couldn't 'see' green, yellow, orange, and red. You can get interesting tonal effects with Magenta or Cyan filters. IMHO the best way to understand filtration is to experiment with it.

Color-to-B&W conversions in software may employ filtration in non-obvious ways. Understand filtration, and you've got it made!

[Steinback]

I found this write up on B&W conversion quite useful: A Scenic World Blog Archive Why Do You Do the Things You Do?

Converting and adjusting each colour/ channel separately has allowed me to recreate some of the same effects that I would have used colour filters to achieve with black and white film. With the flexibility of a digital colour file I aim to get a properly exposed colour picture to start with and then work from there in post.

[emalvick]

Well I take a lot of black and white pictures but I don't think "hey this one is going to be black and white" when I shoot. I decide in post processing which ones work in Black and White and which ones work better in colour.

This is somewhat what I am trying to avoid. I do that already, but I was recently on a trip where I knew the color photos weren't going to be that great (a relatively colorless desert) and that any color enhancement was going to be relatively fake.

So, my idea from the beginning was to shoot for black and white. Yet, that didn't work out as well as I would have liked. Certainly, I've gotten some nice looking photos, but messing with software seems to be a lot of effort if I would have done a better job of taking the photos in the first place.

In my film days, I shot with yellow and red filters along with polarizers, and I'll admit that the colored filters made things easier to see. I suppose I could do the same thing now, but I'll admit that I like to have a raw file just in case I take that photo that I wish I had in color. Perhaps I'm a little selfish there in wanting both.

[emalvick]

Sounds to me as though you are asking a question of esthetics not a technical question - how to see in black in white before you even press the shutter.

If it was me I would look at the great B/W masters of the past and why their pictures work as B/W images.

This would be a good place to start:
Masters of Photography

Yes, I am asking as an esthetic question. Although I'll admit that even in looking at what you showed as an example, the B&W image does not intuitively look like what I'd expect... Why? The first thing that strikes me is the sky is fairly dark, yet the lightest portions (which aren't that light to me) end up being almost white in the black and white. Now, I can see how to get there and do it myself, but if I took that image on black and white film, I don't think I would have seen a similar b&w image in terms of lights and darks.

This isn't really a criticism of that process as what you show is precisely what I am doing these days, but I do feel that I am often going too far on the processing stage to the point where images may not be looking natural (while I am editing they do but I occasionally go back and question myself) or worse, I am suffering from a how does that color photo become that black and white image.

[emalvick]

Generally, thanks for all the suggestions. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, I did use colored filters quite a bit in my old film days, and I do understand how they work. I do remember those blue blockers, which are quite similar to how a yellow or orange filter might work. I guess I'm hoping to be able to see as if those filters are there without actually having them on the camera.

The idea of using the camera and its internal processing and filters may be the best option on an experimental stage and for practice. In the field, I wouldn't want to have to do that, but then taking the photos is what I enjoy anyway. While I have no problem with the computer side in principle, I hate spending a lot of time at it. I'd love to get to a point where my BW images could be mostly obtained with more global adjustments (exposure, white balance, contrast, curves, etc) rather than color by individual color enhancements.

As for the suggested books, I will take a look. It is always good to have a starting point. Browsing Amazon seems to show 100's of references, and it can be difficult to choose a good one as I've found in other subjects and topics. I find the recommendations of this forum much more useful than the Amazon reviews.