Seeing in Black and White

How to train your eyes to predict how a scene will look before you take the picture. Here are 4 helpful hints to think about when you look at a B&W picture or take one.

1. Think More About Light Than Color

Colors can be deceptive, so focus on the light and the highlights and shadow areas in the frame. hile most colors will render as midtones, a yellow leaf in sunlight will be a very different tone than a red leaf in the shadow vibrant colors become dull and flat in a B&W photo.

2. Be Aware Of The Sky

Skies have always been a challenge for B&W landscape photographers. The early films were orthochromatic (giving good color reproduction) and tended to blow out a very blue sky to pure white.

Film shooters used yellow,orange and red filters to darken a blue sky when shooting in B&W. Even a polarizer can help transform dull gray to a richer tone, the filter also elps give definition to any cloud in the sky. This is the best way to add a bold look to your black & white landscapes.

Polarizer Filter used in this image

3. Look At Shadows As Forms

Back in the day View camera photographers composed the photo by looking at ground glass (viewfinder on the back) with an image that was upside down and backwards (that was the hardest when I took that class). This gave the photographer an advantage because it helped disconnect the brain from looking at the scene literally. You'd see forms more than features. This was particularly helpful with shadow areas because you'd tend to see them more as shapes within the composition instead of just "darker areas". A digital camera doesn't allow you to do this, so you have to force your brain to do it. With practice this becomes much easier !

4. Colors Tend To Be Midtones

I mentioned previously in Tip 1, that a fall color scene that's vibrant in color can be dull and flat in black and white. That's because red,green,blue and yellow ~ they all tend to render 4 and 5 in the "Zone System" 1 being pure black, Ansel Adams used this for his compositions. You can lessen this by using a color filter while shooting or during postprocessing. A filter allows light of its own color to pass and blocks light of the opposite color (as seen on a color wheel). For example, a green filter will make foliage a lighter gray. Remember when you're looking at a landscape, focus on seeing the colors as midtones, then determine the best composition as a combination of the midtones and shapes ~T