Thursday Tips: A Lesson Relearned: The Black & White Counterpoint

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black & white, Photography, Tips

I’ve written about black and white photography on a couple of occasions in the past in this space, and I’m going to ask you to indulge me one more time as I revisit this topic—but with a very specific story to tell.

I mentioned, in my most recent guest posting here on 1001 Scribbles, that I’ve been slowly going through and reprocessing a huge number of old images as part of a long-overdue website reworking. Some of these images are more than a decade old and it’s been an interesting experience to revisit dated photo shoots, albeit vicariously.

In any event, going through this mass of material has reminded me of something that I learned a long time ago, but has kind of slipped into the background of my consciousness: some of the worst times for color photography are among the best for black and white shooting.

Color photography is usually pretty unappealing in harsh, contrast light. Black and white imagery, on the other hand, loves contrast. Many black & white images look their best with as broad a range of tones as possible. While blocked up shadows often—not always, but often—are something to avoid in color, letting shadows go virtually if not all the way to black can make often make a monochrome shot sing. There are times when I wouldn’t dream of shooting in color that will see black and white images thrive.

Similarly, for scenes where there is very little color present, which can often result in truly blah color images, black and white shots, with their much more forgiving sense of contrast, can often shine by bringing out a scene’s tones and details in a manner that’s hindered by a color rendering. This can really be exploited during the time of year between the colorful periods of mid-autumn and mid-spring (where I live, a period that lasts a solid five months).

There are also specific types of scenes that, under certain weather conditions, invariably seem to work better in black & white than color. Among these—and something that I was reminded of ad nauseum during this period of website work that I’ve been doing—is the case of beach scenes on cloudy and/or foggy days. Such locales, under these conditions, are the very definition of the term “flat light” when working in color, largely because all of the tones seem so homogenized. If you’re working in color, the seaside screams for a traditional definition of “good light.”

But in black and white, everything changes. Nuanced details, in sand, water and sky, emerge, despite the “flat light.” Tones that seem to be entirely absent in color renderings are revealed as if by magic. Scenes that scarcely seem worth bothering with become intensely compelling. A moodiness and tension that color can’t seem to provoke are present in aching terms in black and white.

I’m sure I sound like a broken record, but I strongly urge you to give working in monochrome terms a whirl. It can serve to help you see better and think with a deeper dimension in the field (which can serve to aid even your color photography). It can also provide you with some really memorable images that you would otherwise almost certainly never even consider making.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday. To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog: Lightscapes Nature Photography.

Thursday Tips: What Nik Silver Efex Pro Can Do for Your Black & White Photography

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black & white, nik collection, Photography, Photoshop, silver efex pro, Tips

A few months ago I wrote a brief primer discussing black & white imagery themes.  Here, I want to supplement that with a brief discussion of post-processing considerations, focusing in particular on the use of Silver Efex Pro, a Photoshop plug-in designed specifically for monochrome image processing and part of the Nik Collection.

In the Beginning…

For a very long time, I did all of my b/w editing using a black & white adjustment layer in Photoshop, with an emphasis on optimizing the different color channels.  Sometimes I was satisfied with the output and sometimes I wasn’t.  I had always heard good things about Silver Efex Pro, and even dabbled with the trial version at one point.  The hang up, for me, was the price.  This single Photoshop plug-in cost roughly $150 (US), which struck me then—and now—as completely out of line.  So I went without.

Until, that is, the spring of 2013.  Google purchased Nik and almost immediately announced that the entire Nik collection of plug-ins would be sold for less than $150.  At one point, with discount codes ubiquitous, the price dropped to roughly $110 for the entire suite.  At that point, I decided to take the plunge.  I haven’t looked back.

To say that I’ve been impressed with the results of Silver Efex Pro would be a gross understatement.  It has completely changed my thinking about black and white imagery and, as a consequence, has made me think differently about photography.  But more about that later.

From Start to Finish

When I begin working with an image that I plan to convert to black and white, I start as though I’m working with a conventional color image processing workflow.  The image is converted from RAW using my editor of choice (in my case, Capture NX2, but any RAW converter is fine).  White balance and exposure are adjusted—if necessary.  Depending on your workflow and preferences, you may do far more than this in RAW conversion.

Regardless, to this point, the aim is to edit the image as though you are retaining color, at least to an extent.  Removing a color cast, for instance, is a good idea because it can have an impact down the road on tonal separation.  An action such as deepening saturation, however, is generally unnecessary.

In any event, after RAW conversion, I bring the image into Photoshop where I invariably tweak contrast with a curves adjustment layer.  Consider that you can take this process further—much further, in fact—than you would with a color image.  In fact, enhanced contrast is frequently necessary to make a black and white image work in its final form.  (This isn’t always the case, of course.)  You can, if you prefer, withhold contrast adjustments until after the black & white conversion is made.

Silver Efex Pro

At this point, I call up Silver Efex Pro and start the actual b/w conversion process.  Silver Efex has several dozen presets and, from time to time, I preview every last one of them, but I have my preferred set of starting points.  The Wet Rocks preset is the one that I use the most often; I really like the way it provides a working contrast point and gives me a pleasing tonal separation.  I have used other presets, but this is my most often used jumping off point.

Occasionally I simply take the default preset, as is, and I’m done.  For a notorious tweaker like myself, it was quite a revelation to find out how often I could do this.  Still, most of the time I make some local adjustments using the Nik suite’s control points.  (Control point technology is the basis for the Capture NX2 RAW converter, so I’ve long been familiar with the approach.)  The use of control point technology makes the process of implementing local adjustments far easier than it would be if you had to make selections and adjust masks manually.  Local contrast enhancement and occasional dodging and burning—by far the local adjustments I’m most likely to implement with a black and white image—are easily accomplished, and far more advanced adjustments (which I undertake, on occasion, but far less frequently) can also be easily implemented using a series of sliders.

The results are simply stunning.  Silver Efex is such a powerful tool that I’ve been slowly going through all of my old b/w images and reworking them, almost invariably with dramatically improved results.

The Aftermath

When I’ve made my Silver Efex adjustments, the image goes back to Photoshop.  If necessary, I’ll now perform any clean up that might be needed and, on rare occasion, I’ll make some modest contrast or luminosity masking tweaks, but this is relatively unusual.  Most of the time, when I finish with Silver Efex, I’m finished with the image (other than saving and archiving it).

The end results are so good, that I’ve found myself far more likely to “think” in black and white terms than ever before.  We’ve entered a time in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, after the color of autumn is gone but before any meaningful snow has fallen, when landscape photography opportunities have ordinarily been exceedingly thin for me.  But with a renewed focus on monochromatic imagery, I’m seeing possibilities that, in the past, I would have passed by.  And that’s worth its weight in gold.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.

Thursday Tips: Black & White Imagery

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black & white, Photography, Tips

Most of my photography is of the color variety, as readers of this twice-monthly guest blog have seen, but I do dabble in black and white imagery…or perhaps more than merely dabble.

“Seeing in black and white” is a challenge; while some images work well in both color and monochrome renditions most, in my view, do not.  Most of the time, when I convert an image to black and white (and I always capture images in color, even when using a digital camera that has a black and white mode, because color images inherently have more pixel-level data), it’s something that I intended to convert at the time I clicked the shutter.  In other words, I’m typically working with an image that I “saw” as black and white in the first place.  On occasion, however, I see something about a color image, during the postprocessing phase of my workflow, that suggests it will work well in black and white.  These images are what I call happy accidents, and they are decidedly the exception to the rule.

What “works” in black and white is entirely subjective, but here are my thoughts on the subject.  Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Patterns

Images where form trumps substantive subject matter often work better in monochrome than color, because the color can often—not always, but frequently—serve to hide the form.  If it feels as though the color is masking the point of the image, it’s almost always worth at least taking a look to see if removing color lets the form shine through.

Take a look at the two renditions of this banana tree leaf.  I think the image works both in color and black & white, but see how much more starkly the strength of the image’s pattern comes through in the monochrome version.

 

The black and white image isn’t necessarily better than the color one—that’s in the eye of the beholder.  But the pattern certainly is more easily recognized in the monochrome version.

 

Lack of Color

Perhaps the most obvious situation where black & white works is when there’s relatively little color in the image to begin with, or when color simply doesn’t add anything to the image’s appeal.  This is frequently the case with waterfall/cascade images, and I often find myself thinking, in the field, that an image will work better in black and white than in color when I find myself photographing this subject matter.

 

The images in this section fill that bill.  While I think this is one of those images that actually works pretty well both ways, I prefer the black and white precisely because it distills this image down to the core far better than the color version does.  This image is about contrast, detail and texture, and I think that’s all driven home far better in the black and white than the color rendition.

 

Contrast

One of the advantages of a monochrome approach is that you have far greater latitude to apply extreme contrast to an image without it seeming forced.   When an image is in color, strong contrast can appear garish, but with black and white, we’re already suspending our expectations for a “realistic” depiction; after all, we don’t see naturally in black and white (most of us don’t, anyway).  Note how the added contrast to the black and white version of the image below completely changes the feel of the shot.  Again, whether it’s “better” or not is subjective, and beside the point in this instance.  A monochromatic interpretation provides a far broader range of tolerance for artistic expression in photography than is the case with color.

 

Mood

Sometimes when the light is fairly flat, a color image just kind of sits there and does nothing for us.  Black and white not infrequently suits a naturally somber mood, and helps bring it to the fore without just seeming blah.  I think that reflects the seaside image set below fairly well.  The color shot doesn’t do much for me; the only reason I worked the image up in color was for this presentation.  But the black & white really captures the moody feel of that damp, chilly overcast day.

Note:  I’d be happy to spend a future column discussing black & white postprocessing workflow.  If that holds any interest to you, please let me know by leaving a comment to that effect.  Thanks.

Thursday Tips is written by Kerry Mark Leibowitz, a guest blogger on 1001 Scribbles, and appears every other Thursday.  To read more of his thoughts on photography, please visit his blog:  Lightscapes Nature Photography.