Creative Black And White

Exploring black-and-white photography is a process that takes technical knowledge and creative flair

Most articles on black-and-white photography in the digital era quickly become technical, and with good reason… getting your head around the complexities of converting multiple colours into different shades of grey takes some study and effort to be able to visualize. I’ll try to do no more than necessary, because I’d like to focus instead on seeing the black-and-white option as a creative tool. In other words, more about the ‘why’ of black and white than the ‘how’.

Possibly the greatest difference between photographing in colour and shooting in black and white is in expression. There are all kinds of ways of treating colour, made easier with the range of software processing now available, but by far the most accepted standard is the target of ‘realism’. Without getting too philosophical about it, most of us aim to get an image quality that’s faithful to the original scene.