Since first getting into (or being infected by… depending on your point of view) this black and white caper my general approach has been to take photographs with the specific intention of their ending up as black and white. (Er… that’s not very well explained but I’ll clarify in a moment.)
Dead easy normally because for most of the b&w stuff I’ve used the Lumix (Panasonic Lumix FZ38) and shot in JPEG with the camera set to black and white, so the initial conversion’s all done in-camera and I don’t get to have an original file containing the colour data. All that remains is for me to do a little bit (or a lot… depending on what I want to achieve) of post-pro tweaking.
This may not be the ideal way of producing b&w pics as it leaves too many decisions to the in-camera processor. That said, I happen to quite like the general appearance of the b&w JPEGs produced by the Lumix so I’m reasonably happy with it.
On the odd occasions that I’ve used one of the dSLRs for b&w, and invariably shooting in RAW, I do of course have access to all the colour data, doing the conversion to b&w in Lightroom.
There are a number of different ways of achieving such a conversion, my own preference being for the Lightroom equivalent of channel mixing. Then do a bit more tweaking of various things to achieve the effect I’m after.
The whole point being though that rarely (I’ll not say “never” as that wouldn’t be wholly true) do I go out, shoot a bunch of pics in colour, and then decide afterwards which ones to convert to black and white. Which is to say that the intention to end up with b&w is there at the outset. And that raises the possibly interesting question (that I really don’t want to get into at the moment) of how much that initial decision dictates what I shoot, or even how for that matter.
So getting back on topic…
Consequently its never really occurred to me to look back over all the colour stuff I’ve done to see if any would lend themselves to a black and white conversion. They were shot in colour with the intention of being reproduced in colour and that’s been an end to the matter.
However…
What we have ’ere is a pic I took back in the winter of ’08, of St Mary’s Gardens in Bedford…
I’ve had this pic as the desktop wallpaper on one of my infernal machines for quite a while.
And here comes the interesting bit…
When I click the Start button and select “Turn Off Computer” this little dialogue thingie pops up with options to “Stand By”, “Turn Off”, or “Restart”. You know the one I mean? Well, Windows users will. Dunno about all those others who use weird operating systems.
And while that box is displaying, the background gradually dims. It’s not too noticeable on my other infernal machines but with this particular machine its very noticeable as the colour is also drained out of the background pic. And what I end up looking at is a sort of black and white pic.
Can’t really say I’ve paid much attention to it in the past. It’s just there, as background. But for the past couple of weeks or so, for some unfathomable reason, I’ve caught myself studying it and thinking it’s kind of neat. It’s not a very good black and white rendition admittedly but it’s still kind of neat.
So this morning, in the absence of anything better to do (um… in the absence of anything more pressing that I actually wanted to do), I decided to turf out the original RAW file and see what I could come up with by doing a conversion number on it.
The problem now is, I can’t make up my mind which version I prefer!
And the other problem is, I’m now fighting a growing temptation to revisit all the other colour pics I’ve done to see if I can find any that scream out for such attention. Which could prove to be an incredibly time-consuming task. As though I didn’t already have enough things to do. That I should actually be getting on with instead of messing around with all this sort of nonsense. And then writing a blog post about it. Hmm.
Mike, you know that I ended up doing exactly that with some of my colour photos taken ages ago. I think that if you shoot something which you intend to be black and white in the first place, its bound to influence both your choice of shot, light, subject etc. How can it not do?
Once you set me off with those few ‘street shots’ I now look for street subjects to take with my camera specifically aimed at converting them to black and white in Photo Gallery, and I probably wouldn’t bother taking the shot without that intention.
Of course, my efforts are purely amateurish and clumsy compared to yours. I am using a simple cheap point and click Sony, and converting using a free photo editing software, whereas your cameras are expensive and also all your other equipment.
There can obviously be no comparison, but it still does not diminish the fact that if you start out with the intention of a particular shot being black and white and not colour, then its bound to (even if only unconsciously) alter your decisions made about which shots to take.
Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. Certainly whenever I’m out on a b&w jaunt it’s in the back of my mind with every shot I take that b&w is what I want to end up with. Curiously, and perhaps somewhat obsessively, I tend not to mix (or at least, don’t feel inclined to mix) colour and b&w in the same session. In my mind I’m either doing one or the other.
Quite how this affects what I shoot I’m not entirely certain though. Likely I’m paying much more attention to obvious things like shadow, contrast, etc. But is there anything else? Does it, for example, impact how I frame shots? Or the subject-matter itself?
One thing I have found is that b&w seems to be a more restricting (or do I mean disciplined?) medium. For example, whilst pretty much anything can be shot in colour, some things just don’t seem to work in b&w. Meaning perhaps one has to look harder and have a much clearer idea of what the end result should be than is necessary for colour?
Dunno. I’m still exploring.
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I totally agree. And yes, I do think that the subject matters. Its why black and white can lend itself so well to buildings. Its all obout contrast I think. Look at that shot. Would it have lent itself so well to being converted into black and white if you hadn’t the light shining on the left hand side and the buildings lit up on the right?
With my amateur efforts, I seem to now be able to say to myself as I take a shot, that will look better in black and white. Shots of greenery, trees, landscapes etc I don’t think look right as black and white but maybe that’s just me.
I suppose that if the shot had lot’s of contrast then it might look okay. It depends. But yes, I do think that the subject is very important.
Landscapes definitely seem to be trickier in b&w, though not totally beyond the pale. Check these out for example. To my mind they’re some real stunners.
Yes, there are some good one’s amongst those I admit. I note how the best one’s are the one’s that would already contain lot’s of light and to contrast, lot’s of dark. converted to black and white, that contrast is then highlighted.
Mike, how have you managed to get your Flickriver gadget to show sideways like that? Tell me the secret!
Um… in the Badge Creator on Flickriver there’s a drop-down box for Layout that offers three options: Horizontal, Vertical, or Grid. Just select the Horizontal layout.
Thanks Mike your a star!
Pleased to be of help
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