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15 Tips For Stunning Black and White Photography

photography tips for black and white
Black and white night photography

This post is in response to a question from Matthew Tapley, who is interested in learning how to improve his black and white photography skills.  I hope this article has information that is valuable enough to you that you'd consider sharing it on Facebook or Twitter.

Black and White Photography Tip #1: Shoot in RAW.  Many times when I shoot for black and white, the photo just doesn't turn out right when I finally review it on the computer.  By shooting in RAW, you'll be able to change your mind later if the photo wasn't as great in black and white as you'd hoped.

Black and White Photography Tip #2: Give your photo some Silver Effex. Silver Effex Pro 2 is a Photoshop or Lightroom plugin that does one thing–make black and white photos look incredible.  In theory, you could replicate everything that Silver Effex Pro 2 does using Photoshop, but I have to confess that I have never been able to do it.  Black and whites look absolutely stunning in Silver Effex Pro 2.  The program is a bit pricey, but it is worth the money if you love black and white.  In fact, when I look at black and white produced by other photographers, I like to think I can tell if Silver Effex Pro 2 was used on the image.  Check it out here.

Black and White Photography Tip #3: To visualize in black and white, only pay attention to lines, shadows, and shapes. This trick is very helpful to aid photographers in pre-visualizing a black and white image even though we live in a color world.

Black and White Photography Tip #4: Pay special attention to noise. With the outstanding low light performance of modern DSLR cameras, in addition to the noise removal programs at our disposal, photographers are used to getting away with noise.

Black and White Photography Tip #5: Look for contrast. In my experience, the best black and white photos usually have some portion of the photo that is near to pure white, and some portion of the photo that is near black.  This increased contrast adds interest to the scene.

Black and White Photography Tip #6: Find a wide range of grays. Having white and black in the image will help add interest to a picture, but if other areas do not have a wide range of varying tones of gray, the photo will most likely look dull.  You can achieve a a wider range of grays by using flash to throw highlights and shadows over certain areas of the photo.

Black and White Photography Tip #7: Use a polarizer. When shooting around reflective surfaces such as water or leaves, use a polarizer to cut the reflections of the sun's light.  When color is removed from the photo, these specular highlights can be distracting the overall composition.

Black and White Photography Tip #8: Watch for texture. As long as texture is not front-lit, it will show contrast in fine details, which makes it a compelling subject for black and white.  This is why black and white photos of old items such as barns or antiques are so compelling–they have a lot of weathered texture.

Black and White Photography Tip #9: Use the correct terminology: Black and white, monochrome, grayscale. “Monochrome” means that a color is placed on a neutral background.  Therefore, black and white images, which put black on a white background, are a type of monochrome image.  Grayscale is merely a way to show black and white images on a computer, which uses a reduced set of shades of gray.

Black and White Photography Tip #10: Look for patterns. Patterns are interesting because of their ordered repetition.  Color merely distracts us from giving the pattern our attention.  By using black and white, images of patterns are far more compelling.  Once you start looking for patterns to shoot in black and white, you'll notice them everywhere: cars in a parking lot, the shoes of a wedding party standing in line, or a row of bushes.

black and white photography tip
“Drama in the Skies” – by Jim Harmer

Black and White Photography Tip #11: Long exposures love black and white. I read this tip on the fantastic Digital Photography School website and decided to try it on an image that I took a few months ago.  I didn't like the picture and had almost deleted it until I read that tip and applied black and white to the photo.

Black and White Photography Tip #12: B&W isn't a replacement for bad lighting, but it can soften the blow. The photo of the deer on this page is an example of a photo that looked terrible in color, but which looks nice in black and white.  I shot the photo at high-noon.  Because I used a polarizer, I was able to cut out the reflections on the leaves and mask the fact that it was shot in terrible light.

Black and White Photography Tip #13: Don't get fooled. I confess to have made this mistake many times.  Sometimes I have shot a photo that includes very little color.  For example, a close-up of a penguin, or a night sky, or a dalmatian dog.  When I see these photos in Lightroom, I often reach for the black and white tools immediately, but I am always disappointed.  If the photo is practically colorblind to begin with, it probably won't look as good in black and white as in color.

Black and White Photography Tip #14: Shoot in HDR!!! I'm actually surprised how little attention is given to black and white HDRs on the web.  I am so convinced of the merit of the black and white HDR that I spent an entire chapter in my HDR eBook talking explaining how to do it.  HDR is great for black and white photography because it exaggerates the dynamic range and edges.  Nothing pops quite like a black and white HDR.

Black and White Photography Tip #15: HSL is the secret sauce. The last black-and-white tip is probably the most important.  When post-processing a black and white, you absolutely MUST tweak the colors in the HSL panel in Photoshop or Lightroom.  An exact tutorial on how to do this would be a blog post of its own, but your black and whites will look TEN TIMES better with an HSL adjustment.

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44 thoughts on “15 Tips For Stunning Black and White Photography”

  1. Really good tips and well written but I did not like the concept of HDR BW and not enough talking about tones, contrast, pattern in BW images, which is really important 🙂 Thanks 😀

  2. Thanks Jim for the super inspiring article. I love shooting in B&W with my DSLR and sometimes i found the photos not as vivid as film. I usually do the contract or curve things in photoshop but the results are only so so.
    HDR is indeed something didn’t came to my mind before. I gave a try and the result is jaw-dropping!! 😀

  3. Thanks, I am new to photography. Can you explain me Tip #9? B&W, Monochrome and grey.
    Thanks again for your time.
    Rc

  4. What is HSL? More: I got an error message saying my comment was to short so -what words does HSL represent?

  5. Bela Laszlo Molnar

    To improve your B&W photography is simple, learn art and learn from Ansel Adams. The pasted moon alone, not going to make your B&W photography great. Plus, a little bet of talent is not a bad thing either.

  6. Very interesting and informative article; thank you. When I think about B&W I think film, not digital.

    As I read this article it came across to be for those more proud of their computer graphic and image manipulation skills than their photography skills. My interest is photography for photography, not for spending time in front of my computer.

    Of course be it digital or film images can benefit from tweaking, but file manipulation is getting out of hand. It seems folks have discarded photography skills for computer skills. We hear it all the time “I will fix it in post”, “I will take care of it at the computer”, and the like; that I find sad.

    Cordially and respectfully submitted

  7. Photography for photography is right. But if you have hundreds of B/W films the computer can be very helpful with archiving. It is always easier to flick a mouse than to leaf trough a number of negative albums.
    And since scanners are now reasonably affordable, you can tweak, adjust, correct without going into your Dark Room and mix chemicals, watch temperatures etc.

    Max

  8. There really is something about monochrome photos that make you almost have the need to dig deeper into the photo.

    Thanks for always sharing your knowledge with us ?

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