Tips for Flattering Black and White Photography Effects

When monochrome was all there was, people couldn't wait for the time that color photography would be invented and made affordable. Now that color is almost all we have, inexplicably, the effect that black and white photography has on us is inexplicable and powerful. There is a way that limited color has of making the emotional content of a subject more accessible. When there is no color, a picture is easily more timeless, more touching. Consider these tips that follow to be black and white photography essentials.

Today's digital cameras don't give you WYSIWYG pictures. What that means is, that whatever images their sensors capture, the cameras don't let you have the full thing. They only give you a processed version of it that's kind of compressed. Some cameras allow you to access the direct uncompressed image as the sensor sees it - something they call a raw image file or a digital negative. They call these raw pictures because there's no way to print them or edit them with a graphics editor. If you have a camera that allows you to store the pictures you take as a raw image files, this works spectacularly well for black and white photography. You get such depth and completeness in your pictures. You take those pictures, open them in Photoshop or another such program, and you'll find that you don’t even want to tamper with them.

You want to approach black-and-white photography rather differently than you would approach color photography. Let's say that you are taking a close-up picture of a person’s face. With no flesh colors to even out skin texture, skin is going to really show every crease, bump, spot of unevenness and wrinkle. This can make a picture look particularly beautiful and vulnerable. With black-and-white photography, you get to see texture, pattern and contrast in particularly touching ways. Where you can, you want to frame your subjects so that these characteristics really show up. You could for instance frame the subject against a light source for dramatic rear-lighting contrast effects. Lighting the subject up so that shadows really show up sharply can be a great idea too.

With digital cameras, ISO adjustments tell the camera to make the sensor more or less sensitive to light. And this would be something you could change from one picture to the next. For black and white photography with a digital camera, the lowest possible ISO - which would mean the least sensitive setting - would be best. Ratchet it up any higher, and it would make your pictures quite grainy.

The results that you get with black-and-white photography are often directly dependent on the kind of subjects you choose to pursue. Pick your subjects correctly, and you’ll have some stunning results. For instance, portraits are especially moving when they are shot in black and white. If you're taking a close-up of your girlfriend for instance, do it in black and white for the most stunning results. With color, you can pretty much shoot anything; it's easy to tell the difference between every single shade on a color picture. On a black-and-white photo, since everything's gray, it can be rather difficult to tell the difference between one thing and the next unless you take care to pick a subject where there is lots of contrast. You need to learn to see the world in black and white.