Shoe vendor

[Manfred M]

Shot in Nandgaon, India, a shop keeper selling shoes.

[Shadowman]

Nice shot.

[rpcrowe]

Another neat environmental portrait. The vendor is separated from the BG by her colors and brightness..

[Manfred M]

Another neat environmental portrait. The vendor is separated from the BG by her colors and brightness..

And that is due to a lot of dodging and burning to bring out the shopkeeper and to tone down the distractions.

[pschlute]

Nice work Manfred, and if I may be flippant, you have captured her "soul" (sole) ?

[Dave Humphries]

And that is due to a lot of dodging and burning to bring out the shopkeeper and to tone down the distractions.

and it doesn't stand out - good work (as usual)

[Antonio Correia]

Yes, good work (as usual) and as expected !

[Jim A]

Very nicely done, Manfred. Whilst I really like the colours, I think it would also work well in B&W.

[Manfred M]

Very nicely done, Manfred. Whilst I really like the colours, I think it would also work well in B&W.

I need a very good creative reason to convert a colour shot to B&W and in this case, I cannot find a good reason.

India is a place where colour seems to be a very important aspect of life, especially when it comes to clothing, so it is a place where I have taken very few shots that I would convert to B&W. I seems to scream "colour" everywhere I have visited there.

The one thing I have noticed when I look at the body of work of many good photographers; some have a natural bias towards B&W work, while others have a bias to colour work. When I first got into serious photography, I spent my first two years shooting almost exclusively in B&W, but ever since I have been someone who has worked mostly in colour.

That being said, I plan to do a bit more serious B&W work, in 2020, but mainly using traditional (film) photography.

[Donald]

I need a very good creative reason to convert a colour shot to B&W and in this case, I cannot find a good reason.

Absolutely. I firmly believe that with digital photography, the choice as to whether an image will be colour or B & W should be made before the shutter is pressed. I cannot see how anyone can shoot a photo and then decide later on whether it will be a finished image in colour or B & W. The decision surely determines the subject matter and the composititon. And that is why I ignore any requests I get to produce a colour version of a B & W image - it was never meant to be in colour and never will be.

[DanK]

I think this image would lose a great deal in B&W.

I firmly believe that with digital photography, the choice as to whether an image will be colour or B & W should be made before the shutter is pressed. I cannot see how anyone can shoot a photo and then decide later on whether it will be a finished image in colour or B & W.

While I agree that one should try to previsualize the image, I disagree with this statement--perhaps because I am not good enough at previsualizing, but also because it can be counterproductive to restrict oneself in this way and because I don't like absolute rules. Images in two dimensions on paper--or on screen--often look quite different than they do in real life. It doesn't happen often, but occasionally I see an image that I intended to produce in color that has interesting lines that I think I can bring out more in black and white. So why not try? One of the very nice features of digital is the flexibility it offers. You don't have to decide what film to put in your camera before you take the shot. I see no reason not to take advantage of that.

For that matter, in general, not just in choosing between B&W and color, I see no reason not to try different processing approaches. New ideas may arise that didn't arise when one was initially composing the shot. Certainly, I often see flaws that I didn't notice when composing the shot, and occasionally, I see positive elements that I missed at first. And sometimes, there are a variety of different ways one can finish the image. Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral more than 30 times, producing very different images. He exhibited 20 of them together, to great praise, and sold 8 of them before the first exhibit ended.

So my advice is: Yes, think hard about what you want the image to be before you take the capture, but if you think your image might look better processed in another way--whether that be converting to B&W or not--try it and see.

[Manfred M]

Absolutely. I firmly believe that with digital photography, the choice as to whether an image will be colour or B & W should be made before the shutter is pressed. I cannot see how anyone can shoot a photo and then decide later on whether it will be a finished image in colour or B & W. The decision surely determines the subject matter and the composititon. And that is why I ignore any requests I get to produce a colour version of a B & W image - it was never meant to be in colour and never will be.

I work that way when I shoot most of the time, but will be honest enough to say that I will often check out an image as a B&W just to make sure I'm not missing something. That being said, I don't think I have changed my mind more than a handful of times.

That being said, I do know a photographer who is quite well known locally who does not work this way. He cannot pre-visualize well enough and makes his decision after viewing his work in both B&W and colour.

https://byoungphoto.com/

[DanK]

That being said, I don't think I have changed my mind more than a handful of times.

That's true of me as well when the question is B&W vs. color, but I have many times changed my mind about other aspects of processing, some of which produced major changes in the final image. In fact, people here often suggest a simple edit that can dramatically alter an image: changing a crop.

I just don't see the value of suggesting yet another restriction. I do think it is critically important to train oneself to think carefully about the image before clicking the shutter (with the exception of types of photography that don't allow one the time to do that), but once the capture is done, it seems to me that one should feel free to avail oneself of whatever tools are available to produce an image--or possibly a number of different images from the same capture--that one finds satisfying.

I'm thinking now of the many novices who have participated in this forum over the years. Some of the advice they get has to be in the form of rules, because some of them are physical principles. E.g., if you expose to the left, you will have a lower ratio of signal to noise. You may not care in a given instance, but it is always true. If you change focal length but position yourself so that the subject occupies the same fraction of the frame, DOF will be similar but background blur won't be. These are facts that one needs to know in order to control the image. But much of the rest is a matter of preference and choice. If someone takes a photo expecting it to be in color and then discovers that it is even better in black and white, all the better, IMHO.

[xpatUSA]

I don't shoot black-and-white but I imagine that it must be difficult to envisage the result based on a color scene. The problem being that conversion by common methods such as de-saturation can upset the luminosity balance.

As to other methods of conversion, Martin Cadik has quite a lot to say about their efficacy (caution: many, many images to suck up your bandwidth):

http://cadik.posvete.cz/color_to_gray_evaluation/

Quite a fascinating article: for a pedant, anyway ...

[Donald]

I don't shoot black-and-white but I imagine that it must be difficult to envisage the result based on a color scene.

No it's not. You train yourself to see in B & W. You can work out how the scene will translate in terms of grey tones. You can also set the camera to give you a B & W jpeg on the back screen.

[DanK]

Ted,

A very interesting article. Thanks for posting. Unfortunately, the page with full-size images is locked, but the article does include thumbnails.

Dan

[Manfred M]

Ted - interesting article but of academic interest only. Most people that do B&W conversion will also play around with the underlying colours to enhance the look, just like they did in the B&W film days; enhancing certain colours and downplaying others.

One reason people shoot for B&W is that they can push the images harder than they can in colour without getting the final product to look "strange".

[xpatUSA]

No it's not. You train yourself to see in B & W. You can work out how the scene will translate in terms of grey tones.

Sorry, I'm not convinced it's that easy. My editor ...

http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Blac...ferent_methods

... has many different ways to go from color to grayscale, almost as many as this:



So to self-train, I would have to be familiar with each method and all of it's sliders and curves.

You can also set the camera to give you a B & W jpeg on the back screen.

I tried that. Not so easy for me with my poor eyesight unfortunately, what with the small 3" screen and the camera's unknown conversion method.

[Manfred M]

Ted - I think you are mis-understanding what Donald is trying to say.

I believe he is suggesting that one has to look at a scene in terms of luminosity, rather than colours in order to visualize what a scene can look like as a B&W image. That is a learned skill, but has nothing to do with the mechanics of B&W conversion from a colour image.

This is a skill I developed as a B&W film photographer, where the conversion was taken care of by the specific film that was being shot. I could recognize a scene that would work well in B&W and one that would not work as well.

[xpatUSA]

Ted - I think you are mis-understanding what Donald is trying to say.

Perhaps so.

I believe he is suggesting that one has to look at a scene in terms of luminosity, rather than colours in order to visualize what a scene can look like as a B&W image. That is a learned skill, but has nothing to do with the mechanics of B&W conversion from a colour image.

So, if I understand correctly, I should be able to look at the abstract artwork in the second row above and imagine how it would look after a conversion ...

This is a skill I developed as a B&W film photographer, where the conversion was taken care of by the specific film that was being shot. I could recognize a scene that would work well in B&W and one that would not work as well.

Hmmm ... sounds a lot easier than IR or full-spectrum work ...