Make the move into magical monochrome
More than a nostalgia trip to the early days of photography, black-and-white images can be truly compelling – and it’s easier than ever to shot and edit them
■ Creating a black-andwhite or monochrome photo is a deliberate process. Unlike in the earliest days of photography, the default option now is colour. Going mono is an intentional move that shows you mean business.
You can use mono to bring a timeless, evocative quality to landscape images; add grittiness to candid street portraits; or give a still-life a vintage look with a sepia or selenium toning effect. Monochrome is anything but grey and boring, and incredibly versatile. Doing it digitally means that it’s easy to recreate a range of classic looks or just experiment, then revert back to a colour image and start over.
There are two main ways to convert your colour photos to mono: in-camera or in software. If your camera has a set of basic shooting modes, it’s likely to have a black-and-white option that takes care of pretty much everything for you. Step up to the more creative shooting modes, such as Manual and Aperture Priority, however, and you’ll have more control over the look of your images.
You can select a picture style when you use these advanced modes, which is where you’ll find the Monochrome option. You can adjust parameters, such as increasing or decreasing the contrast and sharpness, and use black-and-white filter effects to make certain colours brighter or darker in the final image. You may also be able to apply colour‑toning effects, such as adding a sepia tone.
Some cameras have a film simulation option rather
It’s easier to relate the histogram’s peaks and troughs to the grey tones in a mono image
than a dedicated black-and-white mode. Fujifilm’s X and GFX cameras are known for their film simulation modes: these include Monochrome and the grainier Acros, which is based on Fuji’s Neopan 100 Acros film. Each of these is available as a presets with a colour filter applied, too.
Doing it all in-camera saves time, and it’s a great way to get your head around black-and-white when you’re starting out; it’s easier to relate the peaks and troughs of a histogram to the grey tones of a monochrome image than it is with a colour photo. The only trouble is that if you save your images as JPEGs, there’s no going back on the decision. You can’t undo the black-and-white treatment and get back to the colour original.
A simpler workflow and the challenge of getting everything right in-camera might just be what you’re looking for – but there is another way. Shoot in colour and you’ll be able to convert the image to black and white later, using the more versatile tools on offer in your image editing software. Capturing in colour also buys you the peace of mind that you can always revert back to the original.
The drawback of shooting JPEGs in colour is that you can only view the image in colour on the camera.
When you’re framing up a shot, it can be quite hard to work out what will and won’t work well in the image when it’s eventually converted to black and white. Sometimes colours that look distinctly different to the naked eye can appear quite similar in tone when they’re turned into shades of grey. You can go some way to fixing this by using your image editor’s colour sliders to brighten and darken individual colours. This can help to separate objects that are blending in with each other.
If you save your images as raw files, though, you can set the monochrome picture style/control on your camera so that you get a black-and-white preview. The raw file saved to the memory card will still hold all of the colour information, but the image that you see displayed on the rear screen of a DSLR or in the electronic viewfinder of a mirrorless camera always shows a ‘processed’ JPEG version of the file – in this case, with the monochrome picture setting applied.
Being able to see the world in grey tones enables you to compose and frame your shots to make the most of any contrast, and to remedy tones that are merging together. A mirrorless camera makes the job even easier, as you can do this with the
You can fix this by using your image editor’s colour sliders to brighten and darken individual colours
camera held up to your eye. When you’re shooting with a DSLR, you have to view the monochrome preview on the main screen, which can be tricky when you’re following moving subjects.
One of the main advantages of shooting in colour is, as mentioned, the ability to adjust the underlying mix of colours when the image is converted to black and white. You can use this technique to darken the blue sky and lighten green and yellow foliage in a landscape shot, for example, or subtly lift skin tones in a portrait by lightening the reds and oranges. You can also use all of the other processing tools to add or reduce contrast; add a splash of colour with split-toning; or selectively brighten and darken specific areas in a similar way to producing a black-andwhite print in a darkroom. In fact, with a few quick adjustments, you can recreate the effects of using old film emulsions – from the grainy and high-contrast through to specialist films like infrared. Once you hit on a black-and-white look you love, you’ll be able to save it as a preset or LUT (Lookup Table; see page 100) you can use to apply that same treatment to other images.
Selectively brighten and darken areas in a similar way that you would when working in a darkroom