BLACK AND WHITE IS THE oldest form of photography and despite tremendous developments in the technological processes of our art, black and white has remained a firm favorite of photographers over the ages.

Indeed, the walls of most photographic exhibition spaces are more often adorned by black and white images than by works in color.

But black and white is not simply the preserve of the fine art photographer, everyone from the avid amateur to the full-blown professional can dabble in the joys of monochrome.

In the recent past, the hardest part of black and white photography was the fact that you needed a large amount of specialized equipment. While color pictures could be printed at your local one-hour lab or pharmacy, to get the most out of black and white photography you needed access to a darkroom, enlarger, chemicals, developing tanks and at least as much time to spend under the red light as you may have done taking the picture.

Today, with the advent of digital photography, and especially with developments (no pun intended) in the digital darkroom, i.e. a computer loaded with Adobe Photoshop, capturing the world without color has become a lot more accessible to the average photographer.

Of course, as most serious students of photography can tell you, black and white photography is not simply important in its own right, but it can also serve as a very good steppingstone to color photography.

This may seem strange, but indeed, most photography courses may dedicate as much as a third of the curriculum to working exclusively in monochrome. The reason is that it is undoubtedly a simplified way of seeing the world, and allows the photographer to concentrate on the composition of the image and the quality of the light without having to worry about complicating factors resulting from the addition of color.

By concentrating simply on highlights and shadows, on textures and forms, it is often easier to show the true nature of the subject matter. In a sense black and white photography is more real and more confrontational than its color counterpart. For this reason it is often a very useful tool in the hands of a skilled photojournalist or social documentarian. Black and white photography can make the viewer stop and think. If you are unconvinced, have a look at these images by Sebastião Salgado.

At the same time, with the subtraction of color, black and white is without a doubt more abstract and further removed from reality as we know it, and is therefore a favored tool for those want to put their unique stamp on the world that they photograph.

But no matter the reason, one fact is unmistakable, a good black and white photograph can make the user look twice, and it can leave him with lasting memories that remain long after he rested his eyes on something else. The image may be gone, but the memory will linger on.

Seeing the world in black and white

Taking black and white pictures with a digital camera is not simply a matter of going into the world, taking a few pictures and then converting them into black and white.

NO!

Black and white photography requires a different mindset to color. You need to look at the world in a different way. You need to try and picture the world with the color removed. Look for highlights and shadows, bright areas and dark ones, try to see how the shapes and forms in front of you will translate into shades of monochromatic grey. This requires a big mental shift, but once you are used to making the translation, you will notice the difference in your pictures.

The difficulty lies in guessing how light or dark an object will appear when converted to black and white, and one way of getting around it is to squint as you look at the scene. This will give you a fair idea of how bright or dark certain areas are. Similarly, some people elect to take a spot reading from various parts of the scene, which gives a more accurate measure of the luminance of specific areas. Ultimately, though, with enough practice and a little patience, you will get used to just ‘reading’ how the world in front of you will appear in black and white without any mechanical aids or visual trickery.