Black-White

This post is not about that Michael Jackson song with the cool face-morphing music video. And it's not about that New York cookie with two types of frosting. Nope - this is about the fact that some photos just look good, even better, in black and white. Contrary to popular belief, not all photos that look great in color look amazing when converted to black and white. In color, you have the benefit of coloric contrast. But you'll need some areas of darkness and also light/white areas because the absence of color necessitates a need for dark-light contrast. You can see this in the photos below: shading reminds us of the texture in the leafs and reliefs in the wall trim and a white antique refrigerator is contrasted by the darkness of the aging metal hinge.





For you photogs out there, I prefer converting my digital photos to black and white using Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro in Photoshop. Sure, you can do it in Photoshop itself or in Photoshop Lightroom or in iPhoto, but I love the options that Silver Efex Pro gives me to make some areas brighter, some darker, provide more or less contrast, and even take advantage of a variety of presets and black and white film types they've loaded in to the software. Check it out!
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Eric
Eric Lovelin Photography