Creative Black and White: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

243 Pages·2010·10.37 MB·English

by  Harold Davis

Creative Black & White

Digital Photography Tips & Techniques

HAROLD DAVIS

Creative Black & White: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques
by Harold Davis
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
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Indianapolis, IN 46256
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Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
All photographs © Harold Davis
Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN: 978-0-470-59775-0
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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4 Creative Black & White
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Courtney Allen, Christianna Aronstam, Bill Bachmann, Mark Brokering, Steven Christenson, Gary Cornell,
Katie Gordon, Kimi, Denise Judson, Barry Pruett, Alice Raffael, Joseph Siroker, Sandy Smith, and Matt Wagner.
Credits
Acquisitions Editor: Courtney Allen
Project Editor: Matthew Buchanan
Technical Editor: Chris Bucher
Copy Editor: Matthew Buchanan
Editorial Manager: Robyn Siesky
Business Manager: Amy Knies
Senior Marketing Manager: Sandy Smith
Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley
Vice President and Publisher: Barry Pruett
Book Designer: Phyllis Davis
Media Development Project Manager: Laura Moss
Media Development Assistant Project Manager: Jenny Swisher
▲ Front piece: In this photo of Point Bonita and the Golden Gate near San Francisco, California moonlight
supplied ambient background light, with the Point Bonita lighthouse as an important focus of the composition.
52mm, 2 minutes at f/5.6 and ISO 200, tripod mounted
▲ Title page: With this composition of fog and sunlight I intentionally underexposed to bring out the graphic
patterns revealed by the composition.
75mm, 1/640 of a second at f/8 and ISO 100, tripod mounted
▲ Above: I used the bright sunlight and grill reflections to make this semi-abstraction of a 1930s Cadillac.
200mm macro, 1/15 of a second at f/32 and ISO 100, tripod mounted
▼ Page 6: This night time view of traffic lights on the Golden Gate Bridge uses the absence of color to suggest
the colors that are presumably present in the scene.
380mm macro, 10 seconds at f/11 and ISO 100, tripod mounted
5

Contents
8 Introduction 74 The RAW Advantage 158 Using Photomatix
76 Black and White in Adobe 166 Toning and Tinting
10 The Monochromatic Camera RAW
167 Tinting with a Black &
Vision
82 Black and White in White Adjustment Layer
12 Past, Present, and Future Lightroom
170 Split Toning
14 Thinking in Black and 82 Grayscale Conversion
174 Selective Color
White Using Presets
178 Hand Coloring
14 Contrast 86 HSL Conversion
182 Using LAB Color
17 Color Implied 88 Exposure Gradients and
18 The Tonal Landscape Adjustments 185 Inverting the L Channel
21 Visual Implication 92 Exporting Virtual Copies 186 Equalizing LAB Channels
into Photoshop as Layers
188 Swapping Tonalities
22 Seeing in Black and
White 98 Multiple Layers and 189 Using Blending Modes
Masking in Photoshop
26 Pre-Visualization 192 Soft Focus
Techniques 108 Multi-RAW Processing in
Photoshop 195 Adding Soft Focus
30 Black and White
Composition 114 Black and White in 198 Pinhole Effect
Photoshop
202 Solarization
30 Framing
116 Blending with Black
205 Using Curves to Solarize
33 Patterns and Lines
118 Using the Channel Mixer an Image
36 Shape and Form
122 Black & White 210 Duotone and Tritone
40 High Key Adjustment Layers Effects
44 Low Key 128 Silver Efex Pro 216 Adding and Reducing
Noise
48 Shades of Gray
136 Combining Conversions in
52 Finding Monochromatic Photoshop 218 Film Effects
Subjects 220 Infrared Camera
142 Creative Black and Conversions
56 Black and White at Night
White Opportunities
230 Infrared Conversion
60 Portraits in Black and
144 Lighting and without an IR Camera
White
Monochromatic Photos
66 Black and White in the 148 Creating High-Key Effects 234 Notes and Resources
Digital Era 152 Creating Low-Key Effects 236 Glossary
68 Digital Black and White 156 HDR in Black and White 238 Index
Roadmap
156 Shooting for HDR
Introduction
As photographers, we are confronted each the history of photography, the only choice
and every day with a wide array of choices. was monochrome—and people thought
Most of us have the experience of being of photography as being black and white.
paralyzed with indecision when confronted Color was only introduced to photography
with all the choices about what can be in the mid-twentieth century, and people
photographed. have had a hard time accepting color work
as part of the accepted canon of photo-
Besides your choice of subject, you can
graphic art.
worry about how your photograph is going
to be lit (if you are using artifi cial light), As I’ll show you in Creative Black & White:
or what time of day the lighting is best Digital Photography Tips & Techniques,
(if you are relying on natural light). Then many things are different with the rise of
there’s the choice of lens, focal length, digital technology. Presenting a photo in
f-stop, shutter speed, ISO, and so on—not black and white is not a consequence of
to mention the choices about how you will the materials used; rather, it is an inten-
process and present your photo after it has tional aesthetic choice. Furthermore, from
been shot. a technical perspective it almost always
makes sense to shoot and initially process a
Bewilderment in the face of so many
digital photo in color—even if you plan from
artistic choices can lead to creative blocks,
the very beginning to present it in black
and is sometimes called horror vacui—or
and white.
fear of “empty spaces” on the canvas of life
that presents itself to every photographer. Black and white photography is redolent
One response is to intentionally limit one’s with echoes from the history of photog-
artistic palette so there are not so many raphy, and it is wise to keep this in mind
choices. A natural self-limitation in photog- as you make your own black and white
raphy is to leave out the color and present images. The absence of color in a black and
the world in black and white. white print or online image can strongly
imply the color that isn’t present—but only
Limiting photography to black and white is
imagined. Black and white photography
an obvious strategy because of the history
must play strongly to the imagination
of photography. For a substantial part of
▶ The idea for this photo was to isolate the typewriter key used to type French accents,
because it looks like a little funny face. To achieve this goal I kept the circumflex (^)
key sharp, while letting everything else in the image go out of focus.
I wanted to present the photo with an antique look, so once I’d processed the black
and white version I added a sepia tone layer with reduced opacity (see page 166 for
more information about this technique).
200mm macro, 1.3 seconds at f/4.5 and ISO 100, tripod mounted
8 Creative Black & White