Black and white photography often provides a unique perspective on varying subjects. Removing colors helps in bringing out hidden shapes, textures and details. A lot of people wonder why many experienced photography professionals, including Bruce Weber Photographer, often limit themselves to the shades of gray when they could be using the entire spectrum of colors. But in reality black and white images often look more captivating than their colored counterparts. In many cases, colors can actually be a distraction in an image. Removing it helps in refocusing the attention of the viewer to the intended subject.
Bruce Weber Photographer Highlights A Few Vital Components Of Black And White Images
Black and white photography can be largely boiled down to certain key concepts, such as shapes, contract, pattern, texture, and lighting. Gaining more familiarity with these concepts would help photographers to take better black and white shots. They can also use the same concepts to even improve color images.
The importance of shape and form in black and white photography is important to understand. After removing colors from an image, photographers can no longer depend on it to provide focal point or interest in a scene. This may sound obvious, but not all photographers remember this fact. When looking for a good black and white shot, photographers need to look beyond the colors in the scene and rather pay attention to the shapes. They must arrange the shapes in a manner that puts focus on their most interesting aspect. Photographers may also create interesting compositions with varied shapes.
Where there are no differences in colors to separate elements in a scene, one must introduce contrasting shades into their black and white images. They may use contrast to help the main subject to stand out. For example, a light subject can be photographed against a dark background. The photographer may even add more depth to the image by including a greater variety of shades and tones. A lot of patterns, especially the subtle ones, often end up going unnoticed in color images, as these photos draw attention away from the pattern itself. Black and white photography provides the photographers much better odds of capturing interesting patterns by focusing the attention of the viewer on the shapes formed by the elements in a scene.
Textures can get lost in color photography, much like patterns. Whenever a person views a color image, their mind starts to identify and label the elements in the scene immediately. Hence, rather than carefully observing the image, the viewers often see their mind’s interpretation of it. On the other hand, the mind no longer has the color information to work with in the case of a black and white image. Hence, they are likely to pay more attention to the texture.
Good lighting is the key to stunning black and white images as it impacts all of the elements mentioned above, starting from pattern and texture to shape and contrast. One must select a lighting setup for their black and white photo after taking into consideration how it can impact all the other elements. Works of Bruce Weber Photographer and similar artists can be used as inspiration while learning to take amazing monochrome images.