When many people just learned photography, they held the idea that "no matter what, adding black-and-white filter photos will become advanced". They post-processed all suitable and unsuitable pictures into black-and-white, thinking that they had learned the essence of master photography.
In fact, this approach is wrong.
Even though black and white is an enduring color processing method in photography, there are many excellent and tense black and white works in the world, but there are certain requirements for photos when using it, otherwise it will easily be self-defeating.
Today, this article will share with you some characteristics and methods about black-and-white photography, so that you can easily take truly "high-quality" black-and-white photos.
Characteristics of Black and White Photography
Black and white can guide people to focus on the main body of the picture itself, thus reducing the interference of color. Therefore, when deciding whether to process a picture to black and white, we should first observe whether it has the following characteristics.
01
The uniqueness of light and shadow
Observing many excellent black-and-white photography works, you will find that many of them are silhouettes. They have a rich atmosphere, a strong contrast between light and dark, and have great visual impact, which makes people reluctant to look away for a long time after seeing them.
可以看出，它们之所以有如此魅力，正因为画面光影的独特。
And black and white strengthens its feature and makes people focus on it. In addition, the backlight atmosphere is usually much better than that of smooth light, so we can try more backlight shooting.
02
Uniqueness of texture
This texture is not limited to the texture in the ordinary sense. Human skin, ripples of water and clouds, architectural structure, etc. can all be classified as "texture".
When thinking of texture, we can use words to describe how it makes us feel, but texture in photography needs to be recorded with a lens, allowing the picture to replace language.
Color photos often make people ignore patterns and textures because of color, while good black-and-white photos are just the opposite, which can make them more prominent.
03
Uniqueness of the subject matter
Compared with black-and-white color photos, besides different pictures, they also give people a different feeling emotionally.
Solemn, quiet, nostalgic... these are all emotional colors in black and white, so some special themes, such as war, tired people on the crowded subway in the morning, etc., are considered to record them in black and white.
Of course, this doesn't mean that all black and white photos are sad. It still depends on the whole picture. It's just that when we want to express the above emotions, we can try to use black and white.
Ways to play with black and white photography
Knowing the characteristics of black-and-white photography, I will introduce to you what to do from two aspects: early shooting and post-retouching, so that you can shoot excellent black-and-white works.
1Pre-shooting
Although the color of black and white is simple, there are many skills and precautions when shooting. Here are a few ways that can't go wrong.
Blank space
Although blank space is originally a skill of ink painting, using it in black-and-white photography can also make the picture unique and attractive.
For example, when shooting black and white buildings, you don't have to put the whole subject in the viewfinder frame, but you can choose to shoot some parts and leave blank space appropriately.
Similarly, leaving blank space when shooting landscapes can make photos like traditional Chinese ink paintings, full of Zen.
Therefore, in daily life, we should observe more and learn to use blank space to make ordinary things around us less "ordinary".
2Repeat regularly
Contrary to blank space, repetition is to let objects spread all over the whole picture, but they are not spread randomly, but placed regularly.
通常铺满画面的都是线条感比较强的物体，由它们构成的照片可以让我们感受到几何之美。
The surface of the building, the chairs arranged regularly, and the overpass looking down from a height can all be the subjects of such photos. As long as you observe carefully, you can find that these are actually very common in our daily life.
3Choose to shoot early morning or evening
Why choose this time period to shoot? Because the angle between the sunlight and the ground is relatively small in the early morning and evening, the shadow of the object will be stretched very long, and the sunlight will be softer, which is suitable for backlight shooting.
Many works of Mr. He Fan, a famous photographer in the last century, were shot during this time period, which added a dreamy color to the streets of Hong Kong full of fireworks.
At this time, most of the pictures are beautiful in light and shadow, and they are full of tension because of the extension of shadows. If you are lucky, you can also meet Jesus Light, which enriches the photo elements.
4Later retouching
Black-and-white photos only have three colors: black, white and gray, so we will focus more on the adjustment of non-color parameters such as contrast and sharpness in the later retouching.
Improve contrast, sharpness
If the sharpness and contrast of black-and-white photos are relatively low, the picture will easily look dirty. Improving them can effectively avoid this phenomenon.
In addition to adjusting contrast and sharpness parameters, we can also use curves to adjust it to an "s" shape to achieve similar effects.
In addition to making the picture cleaner, improving the contrast makes the contrast between light and dark stronger, and the main body of the picture will be more prominent.
Learn to use "fix"
As mentioned earlier, blank space is a simple and easy-to-use technique, but in daily life, we often encounter scenes where we have to let some sundries enter the mirror for better framing.
At this time, we can use the repair tool in snapseed to erase unnecessary things and make the picture more concise.
For example, in this black and white magnolia, because the flowers are relatively abundant, besides the ones I want to photograph, there are some branches and residual leaves in the mirror, which makes the picture look less neat. We import the original image into snapseed and use repair to remove redundant objects. Isn't it much better immediately?
In addition, cropping is sometimes very important. It can help you compose the picture twice and make the picture layout more reasonable.
Appropriately increase particles and dark angles
Just the right amount of grain and dark corners can make a black-and-white photo feel more and make it like a painting. For example, the slightly magical photo below adds particles and dark corners to make its atmosphere richer.
Well, all the skills I know about black and white photography are here. Besides the above, there must be many other interesting and practical methods.
