Dramatic Black & White

Pro Jeremy Walker explores how to get more from monochrome photography when shooting landscapes, portraits and urban scenes

- Jeremy Walker

There is a tendency these days for photographers to ignore the noble and often subtle art of black and white photography and instead go for the supersaturated colours so liked by the social media and Instagram generation.

Black and white images are photography in its purest form. Colour can be a big distraction, your attention drawn by the vibrancy of an image, not the subject matter and its composition, tone, texture and details, but a large in-your-face splash of bright primary colour.

There is nothing wrong with colour, but black and white photography has an honesty to it that colour images just don’t. After all, you aren’t just reaching for the saturation slider to make the image pop.

Of course, there will be post-production trickery with black and white photography as there is with colour but you have to work that little bit harder in the first instance to actually ‘see’ the image.

You have to respond to shape, tone, texture and shadows, not colour. Seeing and visualising a black and white image is sometimes not a simple straightforward process. Knowing how to use your software and how it – and you – will interpret your file is just as important as shooting the original scene. And besides, shooting the original scene can be tricky enough.

All location shoots have to be planned but there is far more to shooting a black and white landscape than just getting up for a sunrise or hanging around at the end of the day for a pretty sunset and a few pink clouds. Research into your subject and its location and how it will interact with the light and prevailing weather conditions become critical. Black and white location photography is not a walk in the park – but here’s how to get the most from it...

Jeremy Walker