Black and White Photography

[Vigilante]

In response to the post in 'General Photography Thread'

Black and white photography is the most sought out type of photography for aspiring photographers. Photographs without color separates itself from typical amatuer photo snapshots. While beginners judge photos by its sharpness and color, professional photographers, especially photojournalists, want the viewers to see beyond the visual attraction. They want viewers to experience the mood, understand the message and grasp the philosophy behind the black and white photographs.

That is why at Cornell University, the first photography class you take would be black and white photography. It allows beginning students to focus on the contents within the frame rather than the quality of the image.

Here are some samples of my work and the philosophy behind them

http://www.pbase.com/quasars/image/40846058.jpg

The monocolor put the emphasis on the solemn mood of a being trapped behind bars




http://www.pbase.com/quasars/image/45680059.jpg

Again it evokes a gloomy sense of isolation and contemplation. This photo involves a lot of dodge and burn photo processing




http://www.pbase.com/quasars/image/40948574.jpg

This brings the nostalgic feeling of an important event (Cornell's Dragon Day). Noise grain is added to add the classic effect



http://www.pbase.com/quasars/image/45680061.jpg
Mourning among happy tourists outside the fences of NYC World Trade Center

You could use Spielberg's trick in Schindler's List (girl in red dress) by adding color to the subject to create an effect
http://www.onelang.com/encyclopedia/images/thumb/8/89/250px-Schindlers_list_red_dress.JPG

[__earth]

how did you do the black and white with color?

[taufiq]

photoshop?

you can chose the image, cut and paste to make the image a 2nd layer
then change the background to greyscale

i'm not sure how Arthur Lee did it
but the photos are cool! :wink:

[youngyew]

how did you do the black and white with color?
One of the ways I did it is to desaturate it using image -> desaturate (some of the books said it produced better grayscale effect than merely changing it to grayscale image, but i am not sure of the technical reason behind it). Then, using history brush, paint any part you want in colour.

[Vigilante]

You got it straight on, youngyew. Desaturate 100% and then use history brush to recover the color on the area you want.

The technical reason for this instead of changing to grayscale is that you want the file to be remain as a 8-bit RGB color photo. You are only changing outside areas into monochrome while maintaining color on the subject.

Turning to grayscale is like specifying the file to a palette contains only black and white spectrum. Therefore you cannot use any color pixels on the photo.

[youngyew]

You got it straight on, youngyew. Desaturate 100% and then use history brush to recover the color on the area you want.

The technical reason for this instead of changing to grayscale is that you want the file to be remain as a 8-bit RGB color photo. You are only changing outside areas into monochrome while maintaining color on the subject.

Turning to grayscale is like specifying the file to a palette contains only black and white spectrum. Therefore you cannot use any color pixels on the photo.
Oh yeahh... Totally overlooked about the palette thingy. :oops: I like to explore black and white photography too, although I am only exploring sepia effect for the time being.

By the way, do you normally use the black and white setting straightaway from the camera itself, or do you do the conversion with photoshop?

[trishotiwuth]

By the way, do you normally use the black and white setting straightaway from the camera itself, or do you do the conversion with photoshop?

I always feel that using black and white setting makes the effort more original rather than doing the conversion with photoshop. But I also understand that producing quality black and white shots without the help of photo editing softwares require years of experience and even I dont have that. I usually use Adobe Photoshop 6.0 to adjust the contrast and brightness of my pics to create different moods.

[Vigilante]

Unless you want to conserve space in the memory card, or too lazy to post-process the photo, without a doubt you should photograph everything in color. Using black and white mode in the camera doesn't make better BW photos. The camera merely strips the color from the file. You never know you might want to keep the color after viewing the photos at your computer.


However, BW photography is more than just stripping the color. Traditional film photographers use color filters to bring out fine details. For example, when photographing an old wooden building, they use brown filter to bring out the grain details of the wooden planks. Or green filter to bring out the details of tree leaves.

In digital photography, such filters can be replicated. In Adobe Photoshop, you can see how the three RGB colors contribute to the black and white tone. Just go to the layer box that should be on the lower right of your screen, select Channels and then select any of the three colors individually.

For example

http://www.pbase.com/quasars/image/45944995.jpg


Look at each color and see which contributes mostly to the tone you want. As you can notice, the color photo contains little blue tone, thus the blue channel is mostly dark. In the red channel, the eyes are the brightest because...well...the eyes are red!

In this case I like green tone better as they bring out more contrast to the eyes.


Then go Menu > Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer. Select monochrome and adjust source channel colors to create the best tone. The percentages should add up to 100% to maintain brightness and contrast as the original file, but that is just a guideline.

Here is a simple comparison between desaturation normally and careful channel mixing. (FYI, desaturation is merely 33.33% mix of red, green and blue)

http://www.pbase.com/quasars/image/45944996.jpg

As mentioned above, I used 50% on green because of the eyes. Through trial and error, I use more blue than red instead of 25% each because the blue brings out more shadow details of the fly.


Now you should see that taking BW photographs in color gives you the most control in the final result.

[trishotiwuth]

Vigilante, thanks for the tips. I'm such a big fan of BW photographs but being a mere self-taught amateur photographer, I know little about colour filteration and such. I'll be doing photo media and artistic practice next semester tho, so i'll probably bug you much for help! :P

[taufiq]

http://static.flickr.com/42/96615143_3e940165f8.jpg