The significance of B&W Photography?

[AB26]

Been wondering about this for some time now, why do some people prefer B&W photography in a world where colour can be rendered so accurately?

1.) What is special about B&W photography and do you prefer B&W to colour?
2.) What makes a B&W image really special and outstanding?

[dubaiphil]

I'll sit on the fence, as I don't just shoot for black and white but always shoot in colour, processing my colour shots and then converting if I feel they'll work. My first posts on this forum were in Black and White, and I've generally posted in black and white since then.

So I'll just post a famous quote:

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”
― Ted Grant

[Letrow]

I like both B&W and colour and for my own photos tend to stay in colour most of the time.
But B&W conveys a special atmosphere I think and makes you look at photos in a different way. People portraits work better in B&W for me, but that is my taste.

[GrahamS]

All of my work from cradle to the 1970's was done in B&W. I didn't interpret images in colour until the mid '80s, and then most were still in B&W. Colour is a fairly "new" medium for me and I still prefer B&W for certain subjects. I'm sure that I'm not alone. Colour accuracy is beside the point. B&W leaves nowhere to hide.

[MilT0s]

Colour is another degree of freedom, just another parameter or component to make a whole picture.

Colour is a very strong component however so many times it covers, hides, other elements making the image look "too busy". It's just how our eyes and brain work.

By eliminating the colour you reveal and emphasize the tonalities, shades, textures, lines and shapes. If that is what you want to do BW is better. In other cases colour is far too important to be discarded.

There is not (in my opinion) a war between BW and colour. Just different ways to express yourself throught an image depending on the content.

[MilT0s]

Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing is a fantastic book I recommend to all photographers. It explains (to no experts) how contrast and colour is processed by different parts of our brain (and eye cells) thus activating different ways of interpetating what we see.

[Mike Buckley]

Your premise will be misleading for many people including me. I agree with Graham that the ability to reproduce color accurately is completely irrelevant. I've never taken a documentary approach to photography, especially digital photography, so color accuracy doesn't help me enjoy a photo, whether I or someone else produces it. Once I recognize that color accuracy isn't helpful or at least isn't necessary, all forms of photography including daguerreotype, cyanotype, albumen print, infrared, color and others are fair game for enjoying the reproduction of a scene. Indeed, perhaps the term, "re-creation" is more appropriate than the term, "reproduction."

[Venser]

As a street photographer, colour is the one thing I can never control. As such, the dominant colour in the scene is rarely where I would like the viewer to look. Strip the colour away and the problem goes away.

[Manfred M]

Andre - one of the most important compositional approaches that we have in photography is "simplification". We do all kinds of things to simplify our images; close ups, shallow depth of field, etc, to simplifiy the image. Shooting in B&W is really part of this approach; rather than having millions of tones in our image, we limit ourselves to black, white and a multitude of different shades of grey.

An image that is a mass of conflicting colours can become a limited number of shades of grey. Some images just work better as monochrome.

Another place I find that B&W works for me is for "historic" subjects.





These two images are based on the same shot, but both leave a totally different impression of the ghost town Buttedale.

[James G]

Andre,
Phil and Manfred have both made points which I would endorse, particularly about simplicity.

For me B&W is what I started with back in the early 60's. In all honesty, Colour was beyond my resources (economic) until a lot later.
That said I have an emotional attachment to B&W which simply does not exist with colour and still tend to return to it. I believe though, I am now much more selective regarding what I will render as B&W, since I capture almost exclusively in raw, so do not have to 'commit' until I get the image onto my computer.

If I'm capturing wildlife, say, then colour is usually critical to the rendering. If however I am capturing a social scene, or a landscape, colour is often fairly irrelevant to me. Usually the mood or atmosphere of the image becomes much more interesting, and for me this is often best expressed in monochrome, without the distraction of colour.

An example I can use to support/illustrate this is the attached 'self portrait' I did a couple of years back for a CiC's PAD competition. The original image is arguably banal.... the B&W interpretation is anything but....







As regards your second question, I don't think that monochrome treatment in itself ever makes an image special or outstanding. I think that this is attributable to the mind and eye of the photographer and their talent and artistry in rendering their vision.

[nimitzbenedicto]

Webster dictionary:

sig·nif·i·cant
adjective \sig-ˈni-fi-kənt\
: large enough to be noticed or have an effect
: very important
: having a special or hidden meaning

"The significance of B&W Photography?"

Its significance is the fact it is a presentation of a photographed scene in black and white.
Not in color.

[IShootPeople]

I shot black and white almost exclusively as I was learning photography, since we were processing our own film and the chemicals and process for B&W were cheaper/easier from what I understand. Therefore, I still have a love of B&W photos, but I think a good B&W has a lot of story, or soul to it, for lack of a better term. I don't think that every photo would look good in B&W, since some photos are just kind of meant to be monotone. I think it increases the interest or the depth to the subject. However, there are also some that cannot be truly conveyed with B&W and need the color, so it may be a bit of a toss up between the two.

For me, I shoot in color, and sometimes when going through my photos, I see one that basically tells me it needs to be in B&W.

[rpcrowe]

IMO, monochrome is but, one more tool in the photographer's kit. Not all images do well when produced in black and white (or various monochromatic renditions) but, some do. I seldom shoot with the express intention of producing a monochrome image but, sometimes I see a color image which seems to cry for a monochrome rendition...





Occasionally, there are images that seem to do well in either color and monochrome...





OTOH, my wife actively dislikes monochrome images and often asks me, why didn't you shoot this in color?

BTW: I would just like to mention that some images have just too much color in them and that the color is distracting. They "might" be candidates for monochrome conversion. Other images have much of the frame filled with texture and tones very similar and the only differentiation is the color. These would not be good candidates for monochrome conversions...

Finally... I NEVER shoot in monochrome. Instead, I shoot in RAW and leave the conversion to post processing if I so desire. NIK Software has a very nice conversion capability in their Silver Efex Pro 2...

[inkista]

I'd recommend reading Chapter Eight of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, where he discusses some of the differences in how you "read" a color image vs. a B&W one. Color tends to break up or "tag" objects by color bounded-areas, while B&W more of the image has equal "weight", and you pay more attention to line, shape, intersection, etc. You simply respond to b&w differently than you do to color, even if it's the same image. Only Scott says it better.

[AB26]

Thank you everybody for your constructive contributions it is all very helpful.

Though I am not fond very fond of B&W I look at B&W images posted by some members and it works very well for some. For me, converting my images to B&W, does not seem to work very well. I blame it on my lack of skill to see a potentially good B&W image.

Am I allowed to mention the names of Phil and Murat. The images of Dubai traders by Phil look better in B&W than the same images do in colour. Murat’s B&W landscapes/cityscapes work very well, imho. I can understand why there is some consensus amongst the replies that B&W make an image look less busy and it is easier to isolate a subject using B&W.

In my opinion the words of Ted Grant, as quoted by Phil, can be debated. It would be interesting to overhear a discussion between Ted Grant and Steve McCurry on that statement. In the image of Steve McCurry’s Afghan Girl, her soul is portrayed in colour. Would it have had the same impact in B&W? I doubt it.

Is character not perhaps portrayed much better in B&W than in colour? The B&W portrait posted by Richard and the self portrait of James have more impact than the colour images and in my opinion it has more to do with the texture in the faces rather than capturing the soul of the individual. The colour landscape of Richard has more impact, to me, than the Sepia conversion.

Somewhere between what Richard says about “just too much colour in an image” and Manfred’s “simplification” lies the answer to the significance of B&W.

Thank you all, for the lesson. Maybe I should pay more attention seeing opportunities when B&W will have greater impact than colour.

[kashifalijugnoo]

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

[AB26]

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

That is not a very nice statement to make.

Some of us “photographers” have more life experience than the people we photograph. Photographers have changed the course of many a life for the better, the lives of “those they know nothing about”.
Can you read the despair in the eyes of the Afghan girl, an image that touched millions of people around the world?

And why, if I may ask, do you have a camera? Do you think that turning a camera into a bomb will make this world a better place for other people, created by God, to live in?

[Venser]

I can understand why there is some consensus amongst the replies that B&W make an image look less busy and it is easier to isolate a subject using B&W.

Just going to throw out a couple examples to add with the rest.

The signage around the dude was extremely vibrant and colourful. There's also the LED lights above that signage. It was extremely distracting. Even though there's a dude smack dab in the middle looking right at the viewer, you couldn't help but look up. Now there's no ambivalence where the viewer will look.


The lady in the background was wearing a fluorescent pink shirt. I can do one of the following to rectify the problem: clone her out (something I rarely do), play with colour levels and hues to turn it into a different colour (something I rarely do), or convert to B&W and use burning and dodging to highlight the person in the foreground (my preferred option).


This photo I decided to keep in colour. The difference is the coloured objects in the photo are where I want the viewer to look. They stand out. Converting to B&W would serve little purpose here. If I did, it would probably highlight the texture of the rocky surface along with the guy wearing the black coat. The guy in the bottom left would blend into the surroundings.

Again, as a photographer who predominantly shoots street, I have little control over anything. A lot of times I simply hope and pray the person who I think will do something interesting does something interesting. Since I convert, going to pull a number out of my ass here, let's say 98% of my photos to B&W, when I look at a scene I'm pretty good at figuring out the tonalities and contrast of what the image will look like in B&W in my noodle.

As such, I've always been toying with the idea of picking up the Leica M Monochrom. Since the sensor only captures B&W, it comes with many advantages. The removal of the Bayer filter allows nearly a full stop more of light. At higher ISO there is considerably less noise. Losing the 2:1:1 ratio of green, blue, and red pixels means images are a lot sharper compared to an equivalent sized coloured sensor.

[AB26]

or convert to B&W and use burning and dodging to highlight the person in the foreground (my preferred option).

Thanks Chris,

All the more reason to work hard at doing proper B&W.

[James G]

Kashifalijugnoo, Andre posted reasonable questions about B&W, and a number of us have tried to explain why and when we choose to use it

I fail to understand how your comment relates to Andre's question or informs any of us as to why you might use B&W.