Convert to black and white

Strip away colour to add a refined, timeless quality that can lift everyday subjects

Although turning a colour image to black and white doesn’t automatically tick the ‘fine art’ photography box, it does place greater emphasis on your lighting, and on the contrast, shape, form and texture of a subject, all of which can allow viewers to take in details of your still-life that they may not have done with the distraction of colour intact.

Rather than shooting in black and white, it’s usually better to capture a colour original and carry out the mono conversion in editing software. This way, you’ll be able to fine-tune the result and separate the tones.

Save your images as raw files so you can preview the mono image in-camera, while still retaining the colour information you can use to create a stronger black-and-white conversion.

Tone up By recording an RGB image, you can adjust the underlying colours, such as lightening greens and darkening reds for more contrast.

Contrast Look for colour contrasts that you can enhance later. This red onion was originally shot against a vivid yellow backdrop.