Destination Wedding & Portrait Photographer | Sabah

Monochromatic photography is one of my favorite ways to display art. Our clients know us for our use of color vibrancy, but there are many times when removing the color from your image is appropriate to either set the mood of the story or just make the aesthetics of an image look better.

However, shooting an image in black and white is so much more difficult than just slapping a black and white layer over the top in post-production and going about your day.

As a wedding photographer, I have many uses for black and white portraits, whether designing an album or creating artwork for my client’s home.

Black and white should be used to remove distractions from your image and help bring more focus to your subject. A black and white portrait can help focus on your subject’s emotion, as well as eliminate color patterns that take attention away from them.

The key is to use black and white to help communicate your vision more efficiently than a color image would do.

So today, I’m going to go over three tips to help you create better black and white photographs.

Tip #1: Look for Natural Contrast First

Our eyes are drawn to points of contrast, and when an image is in color, the interrupted color patterns separating our subject from the background can help direct our eyes to a particular part of the scene.

However, when you remove the color from any image, the viewer’s eyes tend to look at the luminance levels in their entirety as opposed to looking for breaks in a color pattern. Therefore, when you are looking to create beautiful black and white images, you have to look for a background that will allow your subject to stand out. As it’s possible to manipulate a color’s luminance levels in post-production, you can keep your eye out for colors that are opposite from skin tones, or entire backgrounds that fall into darkness while your subject is in light, just as you would do for a color portrait.

By finding the natural contrast between the subject and the surroundings, either through light or through color, we can know that we’ll have the base to be able to separate our subject from our background.

A great example of this would be to find foliage or greenery. Skin tones are naturally orange, with a bit of magenta, so if you have green or blue hues in your background, you will be able to utilize the natural contrast to separate your subject from your background without using color in your image. This will help them to stand out, and it will bring them into focus.

Tip #2: Use a Backlight

I’m including this tip because often, we are photographing subjects who are either wearing dark attire or have dark hair. By utilizing a hair light for a room light, we can create separation between the subject and the background. Per Tip #1, you want to look for contrast first, but that often means that you will be photographing a subject with dark hair on a dark background. If that is the case, then you need to find a way to make sure that they stand out by adding separation in the form of a rim light or hair light.

If possible, I often use a soft light modifier to get the most three-dimensional look out of the separation light. I try to keep it opposite the key light for the most efficient three-dimensional look.

Tip #3: Use Black and White Conversions to Emphasize Emotion in Your Photographs

This tip doesn’t apply to just wedding photographers, although in wedding photography there will be many uses for its application. Black and white conversions help remove distracting elements in an image, allowing you to focus on telling the story and relating the emotion in your photo. Color becomes a distraction, especially when it leads to the viewer looking all around the frame to find the subject of an image. When emphasizing emotion, every little detail needs to lead the eye directly to the story of that image. This is why many powerful black and white photographs convey emotion or story.

So there you have it, those are my three tips for creating better black and white photographs. By utilizing one or all of them, you can create better photographs that will help you focus the attention on your vision, rather than on distracting elements in the background.

more to come,
JoJ Young

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