Digital Black-and-white Photography

by Reinhard Merz and Erich Baier

In the analog world, black and white was considered to be a kind of declaration of indpendence, allowing photographers to fine-tune an image as much or as little as they wanted in a home darkroom. Digital technology has given us practically limitless processing and color correction options, but today, there is a perceptible trend toward “back to the basics” photography. This article explains how to create fascinating monochrome images from your color photos and how to hone your instinct for finding suitable black-and-white subjects.

For more than 150 years, black-and-white photography meant spending hours in a darkroom, with the enlarger as the center of the vital second stage in the creative process. And remember – back then, you had to choose whether you wanted to shoot in black and white or color before starting a shoot, and you had to know how to use specific film types and filters to produce the best possible exposure. Not only that, but you also had to tolerate the acid smells of developer and fixer to produce your finished image. Nowadays, computers have taken over the lab work and make blackand-white photography a whole lot easier. The digital workflow provides us with consistently excellent raw material that we can tweak and fine-tune to our hearts’ content.

But why shoot in black and white at all? Is it simply because many of us grew up with black-and-white images and subconsciously stick to tradition? More importantly, a great photo is always a subjective interpretation of a scene that “freezes” a moving, threedimensional moment into two stationary dimensions. The lack of color produces a strong feeling of abstraction that doesn’t necessarily make an image better or worse, but certainly makes it different – perhaps in the same way that a piece of music sounds different performed by a big band than it does as a piano solo.

If we analyze the differences between great color and black-and-white images, we quickly recognize that black-and-white photos live from the interplay between light and shade or patterns and symmetry. If these are the major characteristics of an image, it will often look better in monochrome than in color. Other subjects, such as a sunset or a forest in fall, are characterized by the interplay of color and are not nearly as effective if captured in black and white.

(...)

Order issue

« Back to overview

• 

• Highlights of this issue’s free DVD include a complete eBook, sample images from the articles and tests in the magazine and a special offer discount for a full license of the Helicon Focus software introduced in our focus stacking article. Our additional free software includes a series of FotoTV.com videos on black-and-white photography from the early 20th century right up to today.

• Order

Read the Editorial

Free DVD, including:

• The Art of Black and White Photography (eBook):
  This 272-page book by Torsten Andreas Hoffmann describes how to compose successful monochrome images
• Helicon Focus (Full Version):
  This powerful program creates one completely focused image from several partially focused images by combining the correctly focused areas from each.
• DeblurMyImage (Full version):
  A great little tool for adding that extra dose of sharpness to nearly perfect photos.
• Black-and-white Photography (Videos):
  This set of three videos complements this issue’s black-and-white workshop in a number of fascinating ways.
  

DVD Content and Highlights (PDF)