ESFotoClix Blog

In my previous post I showed some photos from my recent visit to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado. When I started to review these photos, the colors and lighting were so compelling, I didn’t give anything but a color treatment a thought. Fortunately, I left on vacation, and after coming back, I started exploring several “lesser” images with B&W conversion. Here an image I first post-processed in color.

It dawned on me that I was missing all the textures in the red rock. Sure, I could bring it out with some drastic post-processing, but the results would be anything but pleasing — simply too far off reality to be acceptable. With B&W, on the other hand, I could push those textures out without being bound to the expectation of realism. The result is shown below.

Surprisingly, though color is generally an aid to depth perception in otherwise two-dimensional photos (warmer colors advance, cooler ones recede), in this case, it is the B&W version that really pops with depth and separation of foreground vs. background.

Truth be told, these next 3 images are the ones that made me go back and reconsider B&W. Shot on an overcast day, the skies did not feature the compelling blues of the first photo, and B&W helped focus attention where it mattered: on shape/form and texture.

We can read all the articles and books we want about how B&W photography accentuates shapes and texture, but there’s nothing like some hands on experience to bring the point home.

If you have been following along in this blog’s entries on Black and White photography, you may have found at least one reference to Michael Freeman’s Master Black and White Digital Photography. Putting the bottom line on top, I’ll say that I recommend this book to anyone trying to improve his/her understanding of B&W photography.

If like me you have been feeling like your digital B&W photographs don’t match up to the richness, tonality or contrast of what others have done with film, and if you have bought into the thinking that digital cannot produce film-like results, Michael Freeman will convince you otherwise. His claim that digital B&W conversions can allow for even greater freedom and more striking results than were possible with a pure film development and printing process certainly surprised me. After outlining how film photographers would pre-visualize B&W and use filters to accentuate one color’s contribution to the B&W tonal range, Freeman states:

“Digital black and white has largely overturned this. Indeed, it is impossible to overstate the significance of digital tools in creating black and white images. there are many, including layers, masks, channels, and curves, and the permutations, when using them together, are, virtually endless. At the heart of all this, however, is the ability to manipulate the three independent color channels, red, green, and blue, so as to control — again with infinite choice — the tonal value of all the colors in a scene. This is entirely new, and its potential is only now being explored.”

Freeman goes on to lead us in an exploration of the benefits and advantages of digital B&W photography. Along the way, he provides insight into how color changes into shades of gray, how to gauge which color emphasis will work out best for the image, and the fine-tunable flexibility we have in deciding how this transformation takes place through the use of Channel mixer. While in the film days we had a finite set of color filters to bias emphasis toward one color, today through digital mixing of channels we have a nearly infinite set of virtual filters and gradations available to us. Secondly he shows us an equally large number of possibilities when manipulating contrasts between shadows and highlights through histogram adjustments, discusses how to preserve highlights and describes how to deal with noise. Freeman also discusses how to finish a B&W photo with toning and other techniques, and closes out with a section on printing for final output, without which the discussion would feel incomplete.

All this, and more, Freeman achieves through short and to the point 2 page topics, each of which conveys a specific point, building up to the next, making both for easy reading and comprehension of the material. If you’re a Photoshop user you will feel right at home, since that is the author’s preferred tool and the one from which he shows the most examples. Freeman also briefly discusses the usage of third party tools, again with concrete examples. Freeman proves himself a good teacher, and by the end of Mastering Black and White you will feel like you have completed a hands-on workshop.

Sometimes we return from an outing, only to discover that a scene we found compelling did not translate well into a photograph, primarily because of unappealing colors. Temptation to push contrast and saturation in post processing often follows such disappointment, but the product is often too far off the scale to please. It looks better, but it doesn’t come together.

I had such an experience after returning from a Spanish vacation 2 years ago with this image.

Biarritz harbor, Color

What I found compelling about the original scene, namely the rock harbor wall standing against the incoming storm, didn’t seem to come through when I reviewed the image on my computer screen. The scene came across as flat and unappealing. Attempts at color and contrast pumping, which I will spare you here, didn’t make the situation any better, and if anything distracted further from the story I was trying to tell when I snapped the photo. Had I misread the scene? Had I somehow used the wrong composition?

My recent exploration of B&W photography led me to take a second look. In the end, the solution wasn’t about sprucing up the color, but about abandoning it altogether in favor of emphasis on line (the sweeping curve of the rock harbor wall), and texture (the rock structure and the storm clouds). After some tinkering with B&W conversion techniques and a couple of iterations, I arrived at this version of the photograph.

Biarritz harbor, B&W

Another photograph from the same trip led to a different result. In this post-processed version, contrast and color pumping included, the juxtaposition of the old farmhouse (perhaps just a shack) in the foreground vs. the newer home down in the distance as a story-telling approach works nicely in color. However, personally, I found that as dominant as the farmhouse is in the foreground, my eye is drawn to the brilliant colors in the background, and the old structure becomes almost a momentary, incidental hook into the image.

Basque farmhouse, Color

Preferring to accentuate the old farmhouse, I gave B&W a try, this time taking care to selectively add contrast and sharpness to the rock face, further bringing out the texture and shape elements. The result is a moodier, starker image, and one that definitely causes my eye to explore the old structure for more than a second.

Basque farmhouse, B&W

Moral of the story: the next time you are left with a blah color photo, instead of pumping color and contrast, give B&W a try. Make sure you give yourself the greatest flexibility by shooting in your camera’s RAW format, and go ahead and explore what B&W can do for your photographs.

Note: You may want to search through this blog’s archives for past articles I’ve written on this topic to see how I’ve learned through the B&W exploration journey. I also strongly recommend Michael Freeman’s Mastering Black and White Digital Photography, which helped me greatly to see and realize the potential of B&W photography.