Trying Black and white.
Well howdy folks and welcome back to the blog. I want to write this week about something I enjoy but, if my social media engagement is anything to go by most of you don’t and thats black and white photography! Now that comment was in jest as I long ago realised being a slave to algorithms is not the best way to enjoy my passion but I find it interesting nonetheless that so few of my monchrome images gain much traction. Part of it is probably the internet deciding that black and white is too different from my normal vibrant look and use of colours so doesn’t think to share them to my audience as much. Part of it is maybe my followers just prefer my said colour images over the more colour lacking mono ones. I thinks also that my skill in creating a good black and white image is probably lacking too. The art to BNW is to look for strong contrasts to attract the eye rather than strong colour combinations and maybe thats where my images lack. Just hitting the filter button to switch to mono is only the beginning of the editing process and laziness on my part has definitely meant that my mono imagery doesnt “pop” as well as it could. But over the past few weeks I have been watching some youtube videos on the subject and also experimenting with a few of my images, putting into practice what I am learning and I feel like it might be making a difference. Mondays photography session in my local woods was a good example of actually searching out the compositions I thought would be good as BNW images. The Nikon ZF has a a neat trick up its sleeve to aid in this, an actual switch that gives you a preview of how your Raw file will look minus the colours and I found that to be an incredibly useful tool on the day!
A good example of an image I wouldnt normally have taken in colour but works well in mono.
After applying the initial preset I would then tweak the curves, contrast and in the case of these images dehaze sliders to further push the tones to something I liked. As with all photography how you edit is where your own personal artistic style is applied to images. Those that dont edit are missing out on at least half the fun of photography in my opinion but thats for a another blog! The conditons on this day suited me perfectly for what I had in my minds eye and i have to say I am very happy with my final edits. This experimenting is what keeps me in the hobby and the constant tweaking and learning willalways improve you as a photographer in the long run. I am by no means the best photographer out there and as most of you know I am my own worst critic of my work but I can’t deny that quite a few people love what I do and i hope I can convert a few more to love my black and whites in future!
In other news I am in the process of establishing a collaboration with a local artist that could prove both fruitful in terms of getting my name out there and also adding more layers of knowledge and creativity to my photographic bow! I look forward to sharing more details on this in the near future.
Thats it for this week all. I hope you enjoyed it. Toodles!