Get started with black and white
Black-and-white photography is a unique medium that is as popular as ever. Rod Lawton shows you how to go mono...
You can shoot anything in black and white, but the skill lies in ‘seeing’ your subjects in shades of grey rather than being distracted by colour, and it’s much harder than it seems.
Colours are, of course, converted into shades of grey, which means that you don’t see the contrasts in black and white that colours provide. Instead, black-and-white photography is much more dependent on lighting, contrast, shapes and textures. This also makes it easier to produce powerful, graphic compositions.
But while it’s perfectly possible to just go out and start shooting in black and white, you can learn and understand this medium a lot quicker in a controlled situation with a simple still life setup, where you can arrange your subject, the lighting and the composition bit by bit. Our setup was created on a kitchen island, with a large sheet of material taped to a wall cabinet and draped over the island. Our subject is a little vase of narcissi and the lighting is provided by natural window light to the right and a Rotolight Neo LED panel to the left, though you could also use a reflector instead. This little setup took no more than half an hour to fix up, followed by about an hour of shooting and half an hour of editing in Lightroom to achieve the finished image.
The great thing about a still life setup like this is that you can get everything just how you want it while being able to see the effect live. Just moving the light a couple of inches or a few degrees can make a huge difference. If you use loosely hung material like we did, you can also spend time adjusting the creases and the folds to pick up the light and help create textures and contrast.
The real secret, though, is to use your Canon’s Monochrome Picture Style to see your subject in black and white on screen as you shoot. Even if you edit a Raw version later, this black-and-white preview is invaluable in helping you see the effect of the lighting and the composition. You will see exactly what works and what doesn’t work when shooting in monochrome.