Black and White Photography Ideas

The most interesting thing we have learnt about Black and White photography, as told by photographer Jason Peterson, is that it eradicates the timeline from the photograph. You can look at a black and white photograph and cannot make out if the image has been taken recently or years ago. The monochromatic tones helps to erase the time factor thus turning the image into a timeless art. May be that is the reason why even after advance technology, printing techniques, the trend of black and white never became obsolete. Last week we published some inspirational black and white photographs and today we have decided to share some ideas and techniques to help you achieve those types of photographs.

• Black and White Photography
• Photography Trends for 2017

1. Pay Attention to Lines, Shadows and Shapes

We suggest you to pay attention to lines, shadows and shapes as this will help you come with an enhanced and sharp image. Since there are no colors, this techniques also helps in pre-visualization.

2. Create Contrast

A contrast is an interesting photography elements and it works very well with black and white photography. The contrast of intense black and pure white makes the frame very interesting to look at.

3. Include Patterns

Patterns help the onlooker in paying attention to the image. The symmetrical repetition in a black and white photograph looks captivating. Since there is a lack of hues it helps in paying major attention to the pattern. And patterns are not something difficult to find. They are present all around is in various forms.

4. Shoot in HDR

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Black and White HDRs are great to work on. HDR helps in exaggerating the the range of a black and white photograph. You can capture a more defined picture with HDR.

5. Use HSL (Hue Saturation Luminance)

This is an easy but important tip. It is used during the post processing. While using photoshop tweak the colors in HSL setting. The black and white photo will look will much better with the HSL adjustment.

6. Try Long Exposure Shots

Even if you are not a fan of long exposure shot, once you try them with black and white photography you will realise black and white photograph comes much better in long exposure. All you have to do is take a long exposure shot and apply black and white to it.

7. Shoot in RAW format

Most people make this mistake of shooting in JPEG format. RAW file contains much more data than a JPEG format. You can see the difference when you process the file. With RAW format you can process the photograph in multiple ways and styles. In JPEG format, most of the file is processed by the camera itself.

8. Use Appropriate Lighting Setting

Just because it is a black and white doesn’t mean you can shoot in bad lighting conditions. Lighting has to be kept according to the subject and not according to the colors. You can definitely shoot a black and white in a lighting condition that might not be suitable for color photography (with the help of long exposure shot as told previously) but make sure the lighting is not poor.

Infact shooting in broad daylight can help you get an amazing contrast to the image. You can have a great play of subject and shadow contrast in harsh lighting which on the contrary is not much suggested for black and white photography.

9. Polarizer

This technique comes handy when you are shooting a photographs where you want to portray reflection. When color is removed from the photograph polarizer can help in highlighting the reflection