Black and White to Me

Have you ever looked at recently shot black and white photo and wondered, “why wasn’t that in color?” After all, it’s not 1900 anymore. Doesn’t color give something more? Does a black and white photo shortchange the viewer? There’s actually quite a few reasons that you might want a photo in black and white than in color. In no particular order, here’s three of them:

Photos with strong graphic qualities tend to lend themselves well to black and white. When I say ‘graphic,’ I’m referring to the lines and shapes in a photo. For instance, take a look at the photo above. It’s the entry to the Sofitel Hotel in downtown Chicago. The abstract shapes catch my eye as strongly if not more strongly than the literal objects in the photo. Black and white helps to disconnect the literal and abstract qualities of a photo, emphasizing the abstract shapes and lines within the frame.

In addition to highlighting the abstract qualities of a photo, black and white can also focus the eye on textures within the photo. The photo of this tree illustrates a little of both concepts to me. I was interested in both the shape of the tree (weird huh?) and also the texture of the bark. In color, the textures just didn’t have the same impact. The difference between the light and shadow areas of the bark would have blended a bit more since the color gradations would have hidden some of the contrast. But in black and white, I can almost imagine what it would have felt like to run my hand over the deep wrinkles across the bard of this old tree.

Sometimes black and white is best because the natural color in a photo is awful. For instance, I took this photo on a bright sunny day in Florida over the summer. The dolphins worked it out right alongside the boat for a solid five minutes. The downside? The water was a sickly shade of green. While this photo isn't truly black and white (it's dual toned - that's another post down the road), it illustrates the concept. There are a variety of ways to deal with weird colors in a photo (adjust the white balance or use off-camera flash to control the ambient lighting, among others), and black and white is just one tool in your toolkit. In this case, it happened to be the best tool.

If you haven’t noticed by now, I’ve referred to black and white as a tool quite a few times. Take note, however, that I have not said anything about rules or even guidelines. For me, photography is about playing and learning, not so much about rules. But here’s one guideline: Even if you know that a photo is going to be in black and white, shoot it in color. When you have a photo in color, you can do much more to manipulate the final black and white image. For instance, changing the white balance of a photo can significantly change the feel of the photo in black and white. Also, make sure to play around with the contrast, increasing and decreasing contrast makes a big difference in a black and white image. I use Adobe Lightroom for post processing, but Photoshop Elements is an excellent and less expensive alternative, and Google’s Picasa is free, although it has less features.

Don't Lose Focus

Exposure: 1/1250 at f/5.6, ISO 200 (-2/3 EV) Lens: Nikon 18-55 at 20mm

Law school has a way of eating up my time. But I have a new goal. I'm going to write one post each week as a bit of an escape from legal writing.

Before you read on, take a good look at this photo. I think it has some good things going for it. Nothing amazing, but not bad. Take a look at the lines in the picture. They converge inwards, leading the eye into the frame. That's a good thing. If elements of the photo draw your eyes out of the frame, you won't spend as much time exploring the image. In this photo the road serves as a border on the left, bringing the eye back towards the center and leading your eye into the clouds, which have some good texture (although they've lost some from being overexposed a bit). Once up in the clouds, your eye might wander down into the tree line on the right, then into the wheat growing through the middle of the picture. Then where's that lead you eye? Hopefully back into the center of the frame to explore some more. However, this isn't a post about composition. There's some sound compositional elements going on, but there's one thing that really eats at me.

Take a moment and look again. What's bugging me? Is it bugging you? Look at the grass at the bottom left of the image. It's sharply in focus. Now follow the grass up into the photo. It starts to lose focus. The eye is generally drawn to areas of focus. But remember where the lines were leading? Up into the frame. So here we have lines leading the eye one way and the focus leading another. That's not good. Your eye is drawn to each, robbing strength from the leading lines in the photo.

There are two things I should have done: 1) I should have set my camera to AF-S (once the camera focuses, it locks until you let go of the shutter) and focused about midway into the scene. I think grabbing focus somewhere on the left portion of the wheat grass would have been perfect. It would have kept the green grass mostly in focus, though not as sharp, and it would have made sure that the photo was in focus where the lines converge. Secondly, I should have set my aperture to a smaller aperture (about f/11) for more depth of field. Remember, a smaller aperture (which has a higher number) gives you a greater depth of field than a larger aperture (which has a smaller number... crazy huh?).

So in sum, two quick lessons for the day:

1. If you want to keep more of a scene in focus, set your camera to Aperture priority mode and use a small aperture (larger number), then focus on something about midway in between the nearest and farthest objects you want in focus.

2. The other lesson might not be obvious, but it's just as important. Don't immediately toss aside photos you don't like. Deconstruct them. Figure out what worked, what didn't work, and what you would do next time. That's how you learn to take better photos.

Meg and Kail Wedding

Meg and Kail married in a BEAUTIFUL ceremony this past Saturday. They asked me several months ago to photograph their wedding, and I was as honored as I was petrified. I had never photographed a wedding, and at the time I'd only owned an SLR for about 7 months. Before accepting, I reaaaally stressed the importance of having a photographer they trusted, and I sent them to see the work of my favorite wedding photographer: Bobbi and Mike (seriously, Bobbi and Mike are amazing). Despite my cautioning, Meg picked me, and I'm really happy she did. In addition, they asked Jessie Ackley to photograph the wedding. Jessie was awesome to work with, and you can see more of her work here.

It was an amazing experience, and it also gave me a whole new world of appreciation for professional wedding photographers. It's a crazy week of law school for me, but I wanted to at least post a teaser

of more to come :)

From Brad Snyder | Blog