Articles: The Black and White Arts – 031

July 29th, 2009 by D-Photo

DP31 B+W Neutral density grad 20

Jackie Ranken shows it’s possible to create magic without colour

Taking black and white/monochrome images in-camera is one of the essentials of camera craft. Letting the camera process the file to black and white has advantages, because being able to see the preview on the LCD screen makes you quickly learn what makes a good black and white subject. By trying to make more images in-camera you learn how to ‘see’ better, in a photographic sense. Experimentation and practice with filters and camera settings are the easiest ways to get the best imagery.

Early photography was exclusively black and white. These memorable monochrome images are imprinted on our minds, and come from a wide variety of genres with diverse histories. From my own family I can visualise a print, taken by my grandfather, of my mother as a little girl, walking down an unfamiliar street holding hands with my grandmother, both wearing big woollen coats while my mother smiles.

Photojournalism is also deeply engrained, thanks to iconic images such as the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima in 1945, as shot by Joe Rosenthal.

We are constantly surrounded by glamorous advertising images depicting beautifully composed, elegant female forms in chic clothing, created particularly by the father of the genre, Irving Penn.

Then there are the ‘decisive moments’ captured by documentary photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson. Many will know his image of a man crossing a puddle with his foot just about to hit the water’s surface.
Landscape photography brings to mind a bevy of images too. Think Ansel Adams and his ‘Moonrise Over Hermandez’.

And finally, there’s portraiture, of which many famous images will be immediately familiar. Take, for example, Yousuf Karsh’s classic portrait of Winston Churchill, momentarily caught without his usually ever-present cigar.

Even if we can’t name the photographers, we almost certainly know these images, and probably many, many more. Go to your local library and read up on these master photographers, look at their images and try to figure out why they work.

The first cameras consisted of a dark box with a small hole (aperture) that let light pass onto a light-sensitive surface. In the last hundred years we have seen a huge number of inventions, from the first portable cameras by Leica, to cameras recording life in the ocean, or its stark absence on the moon.

Who would have believed the digital age would make photography such an important part of everyday life? Is it art? An artform is not identified by its tools but by what it produces. Art is made by the photographers who experiment and change the way we see.

For me, photographing in black and white is an attitude. I am ‘making’ an image, looking for or creating an opportunity to see the world in a different way. When we take away colour we are left with shapes, textures, tones and lines. Learning to make successful black and white images will help you to make better colour images, because design becomes much more important. No longer can you rely on the colour to communicate an emotion. Design becomes a more important part of our visual language, our alphabet.

If line, shape, direction, size, texture, colour and tone are the building blocks of design then repetition, harmony and discord are the mortar. Keep the subject simple, fill the frame and enjoy yourself.

Start by picking up your camera and seeing what capabilities it has. Go to the camera’s menu, select picture style and move through the options to find monochrome. Monochrome literally means black with one other colour, which is why in the same menu you will have options for blue, sepia, purple and green. The most popular tone effects are sepia, which is a warm brown tone, and blue.

Remember, photography started with film and the process involved exposing a light-sensitive material to light. Toning techniques made silver gelatin black and white prints archival, so most surviving historical prints are toned. We relate sepia-toned images to ‘old’ pictures — a sepia-toned image suggests nostalgia and timelessness.

In the same menu, you will most likely have the option to shoot with filter effects, which are usually yellow, orange, red and green. These filters allow the photographer to change specific colours to light or dark tones.

A photographic tone includes all the shades of grey from black to white — see the images of the orange, apple and lemon against a blue sky. Different filters make the tones change. This happens because the filter prevents some colours from being transmitted back to the film, or in our case the sensor. A red filter absorbs red and makes this tone lighter; a red/orange/yellow filter makes a blue sky darker, because this is the opposite to blue on a colour wheel.

A green filter makes the greens lighter, which is useful for landscapes. Orange or yellow filters were used to help with portraiture by making orange freckles lighter, although these days a portrait photographer would use Photoshop to reduce the visibility of the freckles.

Two other options exist in-camera to change the way your monochrome images are recorded: sharpness and contrast. Increasing sharpness makes the edges of an area sharper by creating a small white line around light or dark shapes.

However, too much sharpening is not aesthetically pleasing. It’s generally best to leave this function at the manufacturer’s recommendation, which is usually somewhere in the middle. Going ‘unsharper’ in-camera makes your images softer. You’ll have better control of this application in Photoshop with a filter called ‘unsharp mask’, but the control is there in the camera if you want it.
The second option is to change contrast. This can be useful if you’re shooting in soft light or it’s an overcast day. Most black and white images need some extra contrast before printing, so if you like to print direct from your camera then this could be useful, because blacks get blacker and the whites get whiter.

Other filters you won’t find in the camera but which are great to use include circular polarisers, infrared filters, neutral density filters and graduated neutral density filters.

Green Filter
Orange Filter
Red Filter
Yellow Filter
Contrast High
Contrast Low

DP31 B+W Polarization problem

Circular polarisers

This is a ‘must-have’ filter. It removes reflections off shiny surfaces including leaves, grass, mirrors, windows, water, air droplets, the skin on the side of someone’s face or the top of their head (if they have no hair!).
Polarisers are dark pieces of glass, and take away about 1.5 stops of light. They’re useful filters to have if you want to cut back the light and achieve a slower shutter speed, and are especially handy for situations such as photographing moving water where you want that ‘smooth, silky’ effect.

Polarisers can make a blue sky very dark, especially when the sun is at your shoulder. To make this variety of filter work, you need to turn the outside ring. Only in a small twist of the 360-degree turn will you see the effect; sometimes you don’t see any difference, and that’s when you take it off or, better still, don’t put it on in the first place. You can hold a polariser up in front of your eye and turn it to see if it’s going to work before screwing it on.

The effect of the polariser needs to be considered. Try to develop an eye for what feels right. Be aware that polarisers can make an image feel muddy and won’t cover the viewing parameters of a wide-angle lens. Look for a dark or muddy patch through the sky and try to even it out by turning the polariser.

Infrared filters

Traditionally, a true infrared landscape image was best made on infrared film. Shooting on a bright, sunny day, the effect was a surreal landscape where all greens in the landscape took on a ghostly white tone.
Most modern digital cameras have an inbuilt filter to block out infrared light, so this extreme effect is hard to create. Some photographers opt to have their second camera permanently modified by removing this filter simply to be able to shoot pseudo-infrared.

I’m not one of those people, but I do use an infrared filter on my Canon gear and like the effect. The filter itself is a deep red colour so is only good for monochrome. I suggest you change your setting to monochrome and shoot a RAW file and a JPEG. You’ll need to pre-focus before you put the filter on, because it is so dark you can’t see through it. Exposure needs to be extended to up to three stops (nine clicks slower shutter speed) from what the camera’s meter suggests.

A good starting point is f8 at 10 seconds with ISO100 on a sunny day. Check your RGB histogram to make sure your red channel has not overexposed, and experiment from there. All you need to find is an interesting subject.

This filter certainly lets you see the world in a different way, because the shutter speed is so slow it can record the movement of clouds across the sky on a windy day.

Polarising Filter Off
Polarising Filter On
Infared Filter Attached

Neutral density filters

Neutral density filters reduce the amount of light passing through the lens and allow the flexibility of using slower shutter speeds, especially on bright days where you might want to record movement as a blur. Neutral density filters come as ND 2 (one stop) ND 4 (two stops) and ND 8 (three stops); the higher the number the more light they cut. If you’re going to buy just one, get a high number, because you can always use your polariser to help cut back the light by 1.5 stops.

Graduated neutral density filters

These filters are dark at one end and clear at the other. Two grades are available — one stop and two stops. They are most useful for reducing brightness in skies, or adding drama to a sky by making it darker (great for storms). I use the Cokin ‘p’ size range P120 and P121; at around $38 they are cheap to replace if they get scratched. I don’t like using Cokin’s mounting system, so I use Blu-Tack then attach the filter to the edge of the lens (see picture below). You could opt for a better quality glass graduated neutral density filter, but you’re stuck with the graduation in the middle.
The smaller your aperture the more noticeable the graduation becomes in your images. Try to line up the graduation on a horizon line.

All these filters and techniques help you to craft your image in-camera. Learning this craft is especially important for people who shoot in JPEGs, because making significant changes to a file in the computer is a destructive process and the loss of pixels can lead to banding and low print quality. Many articles have been written about the advantages of shooting RAW files, which retain all the colour information, even when you’ve selected black and white (I shoot RAW to better process the image later). Read Hans Weichselbaum’s articles in the D-Image section to find out more about the format.

When I shoot with my infrared filter, I also shoot a JPEG because I like the way the camera processes the file. The last option for the JPEG shooter is to create a file in monochrome and then shoot a file in colour, so you have both to evaluate. If you like what you see on your LCD screen then I suggest you definitely make a JPEG, since it takes you back to how you really felt about the image at the time of exposure; you just have to then learn how to recreate this feeling in the computer. Happy shooting.

Words: Jackie Rankin

This article is from D-Photo issue 31.