monochrome Archives - Infrared Conversions, IR Modifications & Photography Tutorials

6 Tips To Help You Capture Better Monochrome Photographs

The world of photography has certainly moved on from the days of black-and-white film photographers. But there is still a great deal that can be learned from capturing photos in black-and-white. Monochrome photos are incredibly difficult to master. Without the addition of colour, it makes your subject even more vital to the composition. But if you’ve never taken black-and-white photographs you should certainly try as you may be surprised by how much you enjoy the process. To help you on your way here are 6 tips for capturing better black-and-white photographs.

Shoot in colour and in RAW

This might sound weird but for black-and-white photographs, you should actually be photographing in colour. Even back in the days of Black-and-white film photography photographers used colour filters and subsequently a darkroom process called dodging and burning to capture black-and-white photos. Nowadays you can set your camera to capture black-and-white photos. But what the camera is really doing is converting colours into different shades of grey. Ideally, you should also be photographing in RAW format rather than jpeg. It is the best quality and file format for photography. This will then allow you to convert your colour image into monochrome in post-processing.

See in black-and-white

Even though you are going to be shooting in colour what you need to do is to train yourself to be able to see the world in black-and-white. The big difference between black-and-white photography as opposed to normal colour photography is that you are relying far more on contrast, shape and texture rather than colours. This means that when you have complementary colours that are converted to monochrome you need to have enough tonal contrast to make the subject stand out. Without this contrast, your images will begin to look flat and uninteresting. You can, of course, adjust these tones in editing software to introduce some tonal contrast. But as a good starting point is to try to find subjects that give you the contrast, to begin with.

Simple composition

The biggest challenge when it comes to black and white photography is to ensure that your main subject stands out. To be able to do that in a busy scene requires skill and a lot of practice. So to start with look for simple compositions. Frame your subject using something like the rule of thirds and learn how the different tones appear in a black-and-white image. As you become more and more comfortable with black and white photography you can tackle more complex scenes.

Long exposures and black-and-white photos

One of the best techniques to use for monochrome photography is long exposure. This works really effectively when you have soft areas in your image to contrast versus hard, sharp edges. For example, photographing rocks in the water or moving clouds against a cityscape can have fantastic effects in black-and-white photography. Long exposures in monochrome photography give you a really good contrast between bright areas and dark areas. But remember that in order to capture long exposure photos you will need to use a tripod and possibly filters. For example, if you are photographing during the day you’ll need a neutral density filter to help darken the scene to allow you to have a slow enough shutter speed to be able to capture a long exposure.

Learn to use editing software

As we have already discussed you should be photographing in colour and then converting into black-and-white in editing software. So this means that you will need to learn how to manipulate the image and turn it from a colour photo to monochrome. Whether you use Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom or another editing software, you will need to take your time to adjust the image using the various colour channels, brightness, contrast and other sliders to give you the desired result. Don’t just turn an image from colour to monochrome and leave it. More often than not this will just give you a pretty flat black and white image with not a lot of contrast.

This is an image just converted to monochrome and no adjustments added. As you can see it looks flat and uninteresting.

Selective editing

Back in the days of darkrooms and traditional film photography photographers used techniques known as dodging and burning to brighten or dark in certain areas of the photo. Burning will darken parts of the image and dodging will lighten them. For example, if you find that your highlights like the sky are too bright, you may choose to darken them using the burn tool. Or alternatively, if you have photographed a subject and it is too dark you may choose to lighten it by using the dodge tool. this is an incredibly powerful post-processing tool that can really take your photos to the next level.

Monochrome or black-and-white photography is a difficult art to master. But often what you will find is that if you can become a better black-and-white photographer your colour photos will also improve. Black-and-white photography makes you have to think more around the subject, the shapes and textures and so you begin to see the world with a different eye. If done well, a black-and-white photograph can look stunning anywhere. With the tips above and practice, you too can capture stunning black-and-white photos.

Effective Black and White Conversion in Lightroom

In a way, black and white photographs were part of the reason I became interested in photography. I was no more than twelve or thirteen when my parents bought me a black and white Kodak disposable film camera. Remember those? It contained one roll of black and white 35mm film. Everything was set for you…just wind, click, and repeat. The thirty six exposures from that roll of film displayed an alien world. No colors, just shades of grey and contrasts of light. I was dumbfounded at the power that even these simple images could convey.

A picture from that magic roll of film….

Fast forward over twenty years and we find ourselves in the middle of the roaring age of digital photography. Now, we can see the world with two different sets of eyes: one in color, one in black and white. In our digital darkrooms it’s easier than ever to make professional quality black and white conversions from your RAW image files. In this tutorial we’re going to show you how to take your images beyond black and white using Adobe Lightroom.

More than Desaturation

There is more than one way to convert your images to black and white in Lightroom. We start with this image….

Sure you can grab hold of that saturation slider and simply set it to zero. This works. But you lose so much due to the nature of the desaturation.

The photo is somewhat flat after setting the saturation to “0”.

While the color has been removed, so too have the luminance values of those colors. Luminance values are the brightness values of the specific colors within the photo. It’s these differences in lights and darks that make a strong black and white image. Without being able to control each colors luminance we are left with a flat and often uninteresting image. The most effective method for converting your photo to black and white is to convert it to grayscale and then adjust the image with the black and white portion of the HSL Panel. It’s incredibly easy and powerful tool for working with black and white photos. You’re about to learn how to do it right now!

The Grayscale Conversion

Changing our images to “black and white” actually means we are converting them to “Grayscale”. No, grayscale isn’t some kind of mythological skin condition…. Grayscale is simply the term used to describe black and white photos which are in reality shades of gray and not only black and white. To convert your image to grayscale, click the black and white treatment option at the top of the Basic Adjustment panel.

Which gives us this grayscale image of our original photo.

You can also achieve the same result by jumping directly to the HSL panel and clicking the black and white tab.

Basic adjustments can be made for things like exposure, contrast, clarity, ect., but remember that we’re about to do more work on the photo using the color luminance adjustment in the HSL Panel. These adjustments can affect the overall contrast of the image so its a good idea to keep your initial edits at a minimum.

Adjusting with the B&W Section of the HSL Panel

Now that we have a black and white image to work with it’s time to adjust them color luminance and really make our image stand out. You can adjust the sliders for each color to either darken or brighten them within the image but an easier way is to use the target adjustment option. It’s the little dot at the top left of the B&W section.

Using the target adjustment tool is useful since we can select the area of color we want lighten or darkened without actually having to remember the original colors. Simply click the target adjustment tool and then click the area of color in the photo. Just drag up or down to adjust.

In this photo, the sky is made up mostly of blue, reducing the blue luminance values can add some great dramatic effects to the sky.

The same is true for the other colors. Greens and yellows in the bushes can be brightened. The orange color of the ponies hair can be darkened. After some final tweaking in the basic panel we have this final black and white photograph.

Final Thoughts

Converting and processing your black and white images in Lightroom is an incredibly easy and fast process. It also will open up a whole new world of creativity for you and your photography. Think your photos aren’t black and white material? Try the techniques in this article and I can virtually guarantee you might begin seeing your images in a completely different light.

If Your Eyes Could See… Part 2

In Part 1 of this series I presented a few color astro photos that represent what you’d see, if your eyes were super sensitive. In part 2, I’m presenting similar images, only these will be presented in one color, the color of H-alpha. Hydrogen alpha is likely the most important emission, for imaging the night sky. In my astrophotography blog series, I discuss the importance of H-alpha and how to image these nebula with a modified DSLR.

The Veil Nebula Complex

The Great Orion Nebula

The images in part 2 were all photographed in the H-alpha wavelength (656.28 nm). The exposures are long. The equipment is expensive. The tracking is critical. But the results are some of the most stunning images that I’ve ever photographed, all of which are invisible to the naked eye.

The California Nebula

All of these H-alpha images required a series of 30 minute long exposures. These are then stacked and processed to achieve the final result (again, see my astrophotgraphy series). Like their color counterparts, the subjects of these images are so dim that they are invisible to the naked eye. This makes locating the subjects somewhat tricky. The use of a computerized mount reduces the time needed to get the telescope pointed at the target. Then it’s just a matter of fine tuning and framing. The focus is set, , the guide camera is calibrated, the filter wheel rotated to the proper filter and the exposures begin. Thirty minutes later, I check the resulting image to see if I hit the target as intended. If so, the imaging continues until the object is too low in the sky to continue.

The Heart Nebula

The Jellyfish Nebula

Sometimes, I’ll look up an uncommon object and point the telescope in the general area and shoot a test exposure. Many times, this technique isn’t too fruitful, but once in a while, a gem is recorded. This is the case of the image below. I scoured the web looking for similar images, to no avail. So this particular area, rarely photographed, is one of my favorite subjects.

B30 and Friends

Probably one of my all-time favorites is my mosaic of the Orion area. This is an 8 frame 60 megapixel mosaic that required many nights to shoot and many more nights to assemble and process. Anyone that has processed very large images in Photoshop will sympathize on the amount of work required of the computer and it’s operator. Each frame was individually processed. When they were all complete, each one was registered in a special piece of software called Registar. Then all 8 were imported into Photoshop, assembled, blended and processed. more than 40 hour of post-processing was performed on this image alone.

The Orion Complex Mosaic

Imaging deep sky targets is not for everyone. It can get complicated quickly, with steep learning curves on both the imaging and post-processing sides. Imaging with a DSLR can be a superb entry into this field. If your interests lie in photographing H-alpha, like the images here, the DSLR will need to be modified, and an H-alpha filter purchased. An astro-modification or a full spectrum modification can be performed to allow the proper H-alpha wavelengths to pass. My preference is the latter for the maximum throughput and flexibility. It allows my DSLR to be used for astrophotography, IR photography or any other application I can dream up.

The Horsehead Nebula

I hope you’ve enjoyed this short series highlighting some of my favorite images. A modified DSLR is a great way to get started doing astrophotography. If you’re interested in giving this a try, take a look at an H-alpha modified DSLR or a full spectrum version.