ESFotoClix Blog

I used to go around posting photos in forums, asking people: “What do you think, B&W or color?” After being somewhat disappointed with the answers, I offer this bit of advice: don’t ask people for what they think is the better image, B&W and color. Unless the conversion, processing or image are really wrong for one interpretation or the other, you might as well flip a coin. Most people, I’ve found, are more naturally drawn to color, and the few that have worked extensively with B&W will tend to prefer that interpretation. For this reason, I’ve stopped asking folks which they like, and just post one or the other, or post both and more or less set aside expressed preferences.

Here’s what you should ask yourself: what do I want out of this image, and based on what I want, which format best executes my purpose and vision? If you are after form/shape, texture, line or contrasts between shadow and light, B&W will usually be the better suited format. If you want to portray color (obviously), depth, or contrasts that would get lost in the gray tones of a B&W conversion (though channel mixer can help with that), color is the ticket. Asking this at the time you take the photo, as I’ve started doing lately, will also help produce and carry out your vision.

One final question to help decide: how far from reality do I want to depart? In general, as Ansel Adams pointed out, B&W allows for wider interpretation and enforcement of your vision, since with color often carries an automatic expectation of “realism” on the part of the viewer. If you want to be truly interpretive, B&W is the ticket, though I’ve managed to push the edges with color, much to the chagrin of many who review my work.

I say all this as someone who has struggled and continues to struggle in making this decision. In the past few months, I’ve reprocessed many of my photos to try to understand the color vs. B&W and discover what purpose suits an image best. Through this process, I’ve learned to spot an image that would work in B&W as I set up to make the photograph.

Here’s an example where many would pick color, and indeed there’s good reason to do so since the color version works well on several respects. I pick B&W because I am after a representation of texture and form in the rock. B&W is for me the image with the greatest emotional impact, in its harsh, almost other-worldly presentation of the landscape. It’s the one I would print.

Vasquez Rock, California (Color)

Vasquez Rock, California (B&W)

BTW, I highly recommend Michael Freeman’s Mastering Black and White Digital Photography. It’s the one source of information that helped me most to understand what makes B&W work and gave me confidence that I knew how to select images best suited for B&W conversion.

I’ve been doing some thinking about whether to render out of focus backgrounds in darker tones. The best answer I can posit is "it depends." For me, it comes down to what I purpose for the shot, what I wish the subject to be, and whether the background lends context to the subject or distracts from it. In general, I find it difficult to argue that a severely OOF background lends context since so little in it is discernible, but again, it depends. Also in play is the issue of whether one wants to enhance contrast through chiaroscuro to really make the subject pop out.

Enough jabbering. Let’s look an example. Here’s one of my favorite subjects, which has just bloomed in the last couple of days, this time captured with my D700 and AIS 55mm micro @f/2.8. Here’s the original version, as captured image, using the D2XMODE3 Picture Control (the only edit I made in ViewNX), with resizing and global sharpening for Web display.

One could say the green background complements the flower nicely, but I see a couple of bright distracting elements (the bright blob up top and the stem), and overall the image is a tad bland. So I try a little contrast with a mild S-curve, and get the following.

Not satisfied with this result, I decide to give this the full treatment. First, I have to decide what I want to emphasize — what’s important to me. I pretty much sealed that when I composed the original shot: I chose to focus on the "come hither" petal in the foreground, so my PP must follow through with that idea. I select/mask that area, so that at the end, I can apply selective sharpening there only.

But before I get there, I use the local contrast curve and layer multiplication technique I described here. This has the effect of differentiating adjacent tonal ranges and also of darkening dark-to-mid tones. The latter can also be achieved with Levels, BTW. The result may not please everyone, but I think achieves my purpose nicely. The contrast between a dark background and white petals is striking, and the "come hither" petal stands out nicely thanks to the last step of selective sharpening.

For me, an additional verifier is how this image works in B&W. Again, for my personal taste, I find that the dark background and the contrast theme I have chosen works very well. The image becomes a nice study of shapes (form), texture, and tonal contrasts, while preserving my original purpose.

I realize that in the end it is the photographer’s vision and purpose that matters, and that each of us may approach each subject differently. But that’s what makes this art form so fun.

That would be depth of field (DOF), Unsharp mask (USM), and noise reduction (NR), respectively, in case you don’t do photo-geek speak. Lately, I’ve been playing with closeup photography of flowers, trying to achieve shallow DOF with large lens apertures.

I’ve noticed that as I post-process these images, whatever grain due to digital noise is in the out of focus areas is accentuated when I sharpen to achieve good detail definition in my foreground subject. The creamy bokeh the AIS 28mm f/2.8 produces in the original turns harsh due to unnecessary over-sharpening of those areas that in fact do not need to be sharpened at all.

Nikon D90 & AIS 28mm @ f/2.8: with uniform USM across entire image

The solution to this, as I’ve often read but seldom practiced because it takes effort, skill and time, selective sharpening of only those areas you want to sharpen is the solution. In the following image, selective sharpening was achieved by selecting around the red flower, and creating a mask in the foreground layer. Sharpening is then done on the background layer, and additionally, noise reduction is applied against the foreground layer to get rid of the little grain that exists in the original.

Nikon D90 & AIS 28mm @ f/2.8: with selective USM on subject and NR in OOF areas

Not only have we sharpened only what we need to sharpened, but we’ve also softened the bokeh a little more with the blending that happens during noise reduction (depending on the parameters chosen, of course). This leads to a contrast in foreground sharpenss against the OOF areas’ softeness, giving the impression of additional sharpening.

I will definitely keep experimenting with this technique and adjust the strength of effect until I get results that are pleasing and not over-cooked. Of course, this will take image-by-image evaluation, as each photograph will need a slightly different approach. Nonetheless, I like my resulst thus far.