Seeing in B&W

Learning to Live and See in a Black-and-White World
I rarely think about colour. Instead, I deconstruct the image in my head and categorize it by its strengths. It takes a lot of practice to learn to see in black and white, but it can be done. I recommend practicing as often as possible, and you’ll see that you’ll get better with time. By practice I mean look at Black and White images that have been taken by the masters, look at the image, deconstruct it, what are its strengths, how has the photographer constructed the image to control the journey of your eye through the scene. The best part of this practice is that it will not only strengthen your black-and-white images, but your colour images as well. Black-and-white photography gives us a chance to take away a very important element — colour — and focus on the other elements that are harder to envision. I have this year more than before came across images that have said at the point of capture, I need to stay colour, simply because the story is enhanced by the tones of colour and removing those tones will lose the essence of the story I am trying to tell.  This takes practice and an understanding of your own vision.



 A black-and-white portrait can be very powerful, once you remove the distraction of colour, you truly begin to see things for what they are. I like to think of it as redirecting the visual conversation.

Ted Grant said "when you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes, when you photograph them in Black and White you are photographing their soul. "

Knowing that light tones advance and dark tones recede will further help you visualize what will draw a viewer’s eye in the finished black-and white photograph. Just the same as in a colour image where, warm colours come forward and cool colours recede, this will cause the eye to see the image more dimensional.

The best B&W images have a "timeless" feel to them. Ultimately, it could be argued that the most likely way to find success in black-and-white is to look for the same compositional elements that are important to every photograph, regardless of colour, the basic rules of composition. Things like S-curves, leading lines and the Rule of Thirds are the perfect place to start. Place your isolated subject, with help from the Rule of Thirds, or focus on a pattern that might create strong leading lines, or allow a texture to provide a minimalist composition that’s inherently compelling. They’re all great ways to get down to the fundamentals of what makes a simple and compelling photograph, and that’s especially effective when working in black-and-white.

 If you want to learn how to take timeless B&W images, why not join me on one of my Black and White workshops--- https://www.scottfowlerworkshops.com/