Monday, August 3, 2009

Seeing different in black and white


Evening light, originally uploaded by jiihaa.


Leaves, originally uploaded by jiihaa.


Stuff, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

I have continued experimenting with b&w photography. I didn't realize how differently you have to see to be able to take good images. Here are three attempts which I found interesting from the learning point of view. Light and form, in a more abstract sense than with color, are key to images, but it seems to take a long time to learn to see. In many cases, the image wouldn't work at all in color, and vice versa.

The "dynamic b&w" mode of the Panasonic LX3 helps, as you can see a preview of the image on the screen, and thus get some kind of idea what you are going to get.

2 comments:

Paul said...

I think that it is much more difficult to pre-visualize in B&W because it's not our normal way of seeing. You have be very sensitive to shades, not colors. One of the most difficult B&W photos to make, I think, are of forests. There are all different, subtle shades of green, which just don't seem to translate well to B&W.

Juha Haataja said...

As I haven't taken many b&w photographs of forest, I can't really comment. But somehow it seems that there may be a lot of cases where the color is in fact irrelevant, and focusing and the shades brings out the forest better.

In any case, I made just a posting on combining b&w photography, forests, and motion blur. Is this something to explore?