Friday, June 22nd, 2012

Photographing in Black and White Part 4 Light

 

 

When the light is lacklustre because the weather is overcast it is often a bad time to shoot in colour because the colours are bleak and uninteresting.

These are times when black and white works particularly well because, by removing the colour problems, you can focus on the interesting things in the scene.

If the scene is monochromatic anyway and even flat but shooting it in black and white you can reinforce the desolation and age of the scene.

However, that’s not to say that a sunny day or sunrise and sunset is not also a good time to capture photos in black and white – when the sunlight is strong, the contrast between areas of light and shadow become very obvious and black and white is a wonderful way to capture this.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:03 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

Photographing in Black and White Part 3 Portraits

 

 

Black and white is particularly attractive for use in portraits photography. You can use it when your subject is dressed in or surrounded by colours that are not complimentary to them or which are distracting to the eye.

By shooting in black and white, you remove the impact of the clashing colours allowing the subject to become the focus of the image and not their clothes or, worse still, the background.

Bathed in soft light, babies captured in black and white look wonderful and the impact of jaundiced skin or blemishes is reduced.

For subjects that have facial details that can handle harsh light, try capturing your portraits with strong side lighting such as sunlight pouring in through a window. The dramatic contrast between light on one side of the face and shadow on the other can bring a portrait to life.

This type of setup is best used for a subject who has very strong facial features such as older subjects with lots of wrinkles or for subjects who live life hard as it reinforces their personalities and lifestyle.

Children’s and baby’s portraits captured in black and white do away with distracting colours and blemishes and allow you to focus on the child.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Friday, June 15th, 2012

Photographing in Black and White Part 2

What to capture?

When you remove the colour from an image, you are left without one of the key elements that attracts the eye to an image – the differing colours in it.

However, colour is also distracting so removing colour removes a distractive element allowing the eye to focus on other elements in the image.

This image isn’t a good one to shoot in black and white as most of the interest in it is colour:

As photographer it’s your job to find other elements of interest to capture.

Look for different shapes, textures, tones and contrast in the scene that will be visually interesting and make these your subject matter.

For example, one element that works particularly well in black and white is repetition.

When you capture a series of repetitious elements such as trees, fence posts, light poles; then by removing the colour, you’ll be able to focus the viewer’s eyes on the repeated elements.

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 7:50 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, June 12th, 2012

Photographing in Black and White Part 1

 

 

Artistically black and white photos take a lot of beating. There is something about a good black and white image that invokes a level of appreciation that many colour images can never achieve.

In days of film, shooting in black and white meant that you had to commit to an entire roll of film for your black and white photos. Today you have a lot more choices and black and white is only a setting away in your camera.

However, shooting in black and white is a little different to shooting in colour so here is what you need to know:

Camera settings for black and white shooting

The first thing to do is to work out how your digital camera captures in black and white.

Most cameras have a setting that allows you to switch to monochrome or black and white capture.

You’ll need to be familiar with how to switch the camera into this mode, how to identify from its display that you are in this mode and how to return to full colour mode when you’re done.

When you capture in JPEG using a point and shoot camera or a digital SLR, your camera will discard all the colour information before saving the image. You can’t go from monochrome to colour later on.

However, if you shoot with a digital SLR and capture the image using Camera RAW you can generally configure your camera to capture monochrome images but, behind the scenes, the camera will still capture all the RAW data it would capture if you were shooting in colour and this will be available later when you process the RAW image.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 7:39 amNo Comments links to this post

Monday, September 12th, 2011

Targeted adjustments in Lightroom

Many of the features in the Lightroom 3 Develop module have targeted adjustment tools available to help you make the adjustment. Here’s where to find and how to use these on image adjustment tools.

Tone curve
When you select the Tone Curve panel you can adjust an area of the image by clicking the targeted adjustment tool and then drag on the area of the image that you want to lighten or darken.

Click and drag up to lighten and click and drag down to darken.

If you click the Point Curve icon at the bottom of the dialog, you will change the look of the Tone Curve panel and the sliders will disappear. Now if you drag on the image using the targeted adjustment tool you will create control points on the curve. You can adjust these control points by dragging on them.

Control points are not added if you do not have the Point Curve icon enabled. So if you’re seeing the sliders, you’re not in this point curve editing mode.

To delete a control point, double click on it or right click it and choose Delete Control Point.

When you are working on the point curve in the tone curve panel, you can decrease the mouse sensitivity by holding the Alt or Option key as you drag on the image. This decreases the sensitivity so you will make smaller changes in the curve with even quite significant movements of the mouse.

HSL Adjustments
There is also a targeted adjustment tool in the HSL adjustment panel.

Here you can select Hue, Saturation or Luminance and then select the targeted adjustment tool and drag on the area of the image that you want to change. If you’re working in Hue, you’ll be applying a color shift to the selected area of the image. If you’re working in Saturation, you’ll be adjusting the saturation of the color under the mouse pointer as you drag on the targeted adjustment tool. Drag up to increase saturation and down to decrease it.

If you’re working in Luminance dragging up will lighten the color under the cursor and dragging down will darken it.

B&W Adjustments
In the B&W or black and white adjustment area there’s also a targeted adjustment tool. In this case, when you drag up or down on a selected area of the image, you’ll lighten or darken that area so you can craft your own greyscale image.

Unlike in other versions of Lightroom, when you exit a panel while you have the targeted adjustment tool enabled it will be automatically disabled and you don’t have to remember to turn it off.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 3:21 pm2 Comments links to this post

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