5 Black and White Photography Tips
Some of us may remember how black and white film was a retrospective form of technology and we couldn’t wait until our parents got a colour TV set. The same excitement was probably exacted by photographers who once had little else to play with but black and white with grey contrasts.
Nowadays, black and white photography is much in demand once again. Beginner photographers often think that creating a good black and white photo is as simple as turning down the saturation in your photo editing software, but there are a lot of other factors you need to consider when shooting for black and white. Here are five things to remember, when shooting black and white pics, to get that real wow factor from your viewers.
1. Include Dramatic Features
Try using a picture that features a house, shop, church, station or old building and include a sky and the flooring. The drama of the building creates a visual appreciation of your photo, rather than one that just has a landscape and sky separated by a skyline.
2. Avoid Those Tacky Shades of Grey
To make sure your image is not full of muddy looking grey tones, be sure to select a photo that has clean white and clean black. If you see a Tudor building façade with those brilliant clean black wood beams against the plastered white walls, you will know what I mean.
3. Filters Really Do Make a Difference
In the photography enthusiasts’ clubroom you will find they will all talk up filtering. A polarizer should be used to make the sky dark and accentuate the light of the grass, trees, rivers and buildings that make up the land.
Nothing looks better than a dark (almost black sky) and a light, bright object on the ground in the same shot. If the sky is left bright and whiter, it will discredit the wonderful features likes rocks, rivers, trees and any other object rooted to the ground.
4. Darken the Dark to Lighten the Bright
A favourite trick among professional photographers taking black and white snaps is to make darks darker so the lights become brighter. It makes the photo possess more contrast and this can trick the mind of the viewer into thinking the whites are actually brighter than they really are.
5. Study and Browse Black and White Photography and Film
One way to get ideas is to see how the professionals do it and see if it gives you inspiration. Watch some black and white movies (Alfred Hitchcock productions are ideal) and look at the work of some established black and white photographic artists like Boogie or Sally Mann.
