More about Black and White Photography

Light.  And Dark.  And all the shades in between.  What happens is that your pictures are too ‘dull’ or too contrasty?  Take some photos of light colored flowers against a light background and depending on the colours they don’t stand out.  When the sun is bright and shining on your subjects parts

flower black and white

of the photo may be too light and parts to dark to make out any detail.

A trick that I tried to help me observe the variations of light was to shoot in black and white.  When one shoots film, loading a black and whilte film in your camera forces one to shoot that way.  You can still do this with a digital camera as most have a setting to make only black and white.  Set your camera this way and spend a few days or a week or two shooting the types of pictures that you do but only in black and white.

Shoot a lot of pictures this way.  Take pictures of flowers, people, scenery and even very colorful objects but concentrate on the shades not the colours.  You will gradually see the best times of day to shoot different subjects.  Some subjects you will want more extreme contrast than others and even the same subject material will give different excellent results with different lighting as long as you understand it and are in control.

And that’s what photography is all about – controlling the light.

~ by faffyrd on June 3, 2009.