What an exciting time when monochrome photography advanced to color photography. Everyone couldn't wait for color photography to be possible and affordable for the average person. But now that full color photography is almost all that we have, we are inexplicably drawn to black and white photos. The effect of these photos is powerful on the emotions. The limited color seems to make the content of the subject being photographed more accessible. With monochrome color, a picture becomes so timeless and even touching. The tips outlined below are some essential must knows for great black and white photography.
The digital cameras on offer today don't give you WYSIWYG pictures. This term means that what ever the image is that its sensor captures, the camera ultimately does not give you the whole image. It gives you a processed version of it that is, what one might call, compressed. With some modern cameras you can actually access this direct uncompressed image which the sensor ultimately captured. This is hidden in a raw image file or a digital negative. These are called raw because there is no way for one to edit them with a graphics editor or to print them. With this type of camera that allows you to take and store these raw images, you can use this function spectacularly well in black and white photos. One gets such depth, contrast and completeness in these images. Even if you open these photos in Photoshop or other editing program, you will probably find that you don't even want to tamper with them.
Perhaps if we could look at black and white photography quite differently from color, we would see how to use them to their best advantage. Portraits of people's faces come out differently. There are no flesh colors to even out blemishes, spots on skin or uneven texture. The skins wrinkles and true texture are shown up. This is often not unsightly like we might think, it makes a portrait look beautiful and vulnerable. This monochrome photography allows you to see texture, patterns and contrasts in ways that are eye-catching and touching. When planning your shot, you can try to frame your subject to really enhance this effect and to reveal those interesting characteristics. Playing around with light like setting your subject up with the light behind creates a back lighting contrast that causes such drama in your picture. Setting light up to create sharp shadows on your subject can look great too.
Getting to know your settings on your digital camera and changing them according to your shot will bring great results. The ISO adjustment tells the sensor in the camera to be more sensitive or less sensitive to light. This setting can be easily changed from shot to shot. With black and white photos set your ISO as low as possible, this makes the sensor the least sensitive to the light coming in. this produces a great effect. Setting this ISO too high in this case would give you grainy pictures.
Your choice of subject is important when you are looking for great results with black and white. With the correct subject in frame, you should get wonderful shots. As discussed, portraits are particularly striking when taken in black and white. If you want a close up of a loved one, like a child or spouse, choosing black and white should bring out some worthwhile portraits. Color allows us to click away at anything, but with the grey scale of monochrome photography it can be difficult to discriminate between every single shade and the contrast between items on a picture shows up poorly. One needs to take care to choose a shot that would show up lots of contrast. With these ideas in mind, we could learn to see the world in black and white.
The digital cameras on offer today don't give you WYSIWYG pictures. This term means that what ever the image is that its sensor captures, the camera ultimately does not give you the whole image. It gives you a processed version of it that is, what one might call, compressed. With some modern cameras you can actually access this direct uncompressed image which the sensor ultimately captured. This is hidden in a raw image file or a digital negative. These are called raw because there is no way for one to edit them with a graphics editor or to print them. With this type of camera that allows you to take and store these raw images, you can use this function spectacularly well in black and white photos. One gets such depth, contrast and completeness in these images. Even if you open these photos in Photoshop or other editing program, you will probably find that you don't even want to tamper with them.
Perhaps if we could look at black and white photography quite differently from color, we would see how to use them to their best advantage. Portraits of people's faces come out differently. There are no flesh colors to even out blemishes, spots on skin or uneven texture. The skins wrinkles and true texture are shown up. This is often not unsightly like we might think, it makes a portrait look beautiful and vulnerable. This monochrome photography allows you to see texture, patterns and contrasts in ways that are eye-catching and touching. When planning your shot, you can try to frame your subject to really enhance this effect and to reveal those interesting characteristics. Playing around with light like setting your subject up with the light behind creates a back lighting contrast that causes such drama in your picture. Setting light up to create sharp shadows on your subject can look great too.
Getting to know your settings on your digital camera and changing them according to your shot will bring great results. The ISO adjustment tells the sensor in the camera to be more sensitive or less sensitive to light. This setting can be easily changed from shot to shot. With black and white photos set your ISO as low as possible, this makes the sensor the least sensitive to the light coming in. this produces a great effect. Setting this ISO too high in this case would give you grainy pictures.
Your choice of subject is important when you are looking for great results with black and white. With the correct subject in frame, you should get wonderful shots. As discussed, portraits are particularly striking when taken in black and white. If you want a close up of a loved one, like a child or spouse, choosing black and white should bring out some worthwhile portraits. Color allows us to click away at anything, but with the grey scale of monochrome photography it can be difficult to discriminate between every single shade and the contrast between items on a picture shows up poorly. One needs to take care to choose a shot that would show up lots of contrast. With these ideas in mind, we could learn to see the world in black and white.
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Learn more about photography. Stop by Echo 4X4's site where you can find out more about black and white photography.
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