digital black and white photography?

[Kei S]

people say the black and white tells more. how do you make a black and white picture tell more. and what is a good black and white picture. and where can i find info about improving my skills in editing black and white photos. thx alot

[lea f]

Well, a good black and white picture, in my opinion, is one that creates not just one, but numerous stories behind it. And to improve your skills editing them, you just need some experience.

[steve p]

Our eyes naturally see color first. In a photo, this can be a distraction to the subject of the photo. Without color, the subject, feel, mood, and emotion are much more freely able to be perceived by the viewer.

Color DOES have it's place though. It kills me to see someone take a beautiful photo of a flower and make it black and white just because they think it makes it "arty" or "important looking" or some such nonsense.

When you are taking a photo of a scene, really look at it and think to yourself, ... "is COLOR an important part of this scene or subject". If it is not, then in most cases, black and white will be the best to use.

Examples where you DO want color could be shots of Autumn trees, flowers, fireworks, car shows, photos of paintings. See what I mean? The COLOR is an important, critical even, part of these photos. Just making them black and white would degrade their effect.

Photos of street scenes, or a homeless person, or kids playing, are usually not dependant on color to deliver their meaning. You will "see" the scene better if there is no distraction of color.

So as far as editing b/w photos, there are many plug ins and actions for Photoshop for various b/w looks, but personally I use none of them. I like to use channel mixer and make one copy each of the photo in each of the red, green, and blue channels, (with Monochrome selected). I then compare the looks of all three photos and mix the channels to get the best look. I sometimes will place layers of different mixes on each other and keep parts of one channel and erase parts of another channel.

Do not just desaturate or do a greyscale conversion though. It will leave you with a flat, low contrast black and white photo.

Here are some b/w photos if you just want to browse;
http://www.pbase.com/s_parrott/image/90021823
http://www.pbase.com/s_parrott/image/90021847
http://www.pbase.com/s_parrott/image/90021891
http://www.pbase.com/s_parrott/image/90021889

steve