Black and White

I think that my photography skills have reached a medium level. At the very least, it is enough for me to understand what my limitations are and to give me enough insight into appreciating the photographs of others. So, I have recently been thinking about focusing on a specific skill to further develop it. After some consideration, I think that I will try to do some black and white photography.

I have always had an interest in black and white photographs. For some reason, I have always found black and white photographs to be very strong, emotionally. After some consideration, it becomes obvious why. Due to the lack of colour, there is nothing that can carry the photo through except the emotion that it captures.

So, I’ve been doing a little reading on black and white photography. And surprisingly, it seems that the best way to shoot black and white, is to actually shoot in RAW colour. The different sites all distinctly recommend against shooting in JPEGs. With the added colour space available in the RAW format, a more dynamic black and white photograph can be obtained from it. This was good to know because my camera does not have a black and white mode.

So, it wouldn’t make much difference for me when taking the actual photograph. I will just need to take them in colour RAW and do the post processing on my PC. The main difference will come from composition and lighting. But seeing that I have always made composition an integral part of my photography, it should not be a problem for me to compose subjects. But the issue that I will need to look at is lighting. Lighting plays the most important role in black and white photography.

Well, I won’t have anything to show for the moment as I am not going anywhere interesting. I will probably play around with it, and my new lens, after I go home.