How to fall back in love with photography – Monochrome

This is one of series of articles on how to inspire you to take more photographs. If you are like me you can sometimes get jaded and think you have taken all the photographs you are ever going to take. You might as well sell the camera!

But before you put it on eBay here’s an idea. Why not try something different, disrupt the way you take your photographs? One way to do this is to start photographing in monochrome. Stop seeing the world in colour and see it in subtle shades of grey or dramatic black and white.

We live in a colour world and the ambition of many early photographers was to capture that colour, something which only became practical in the middle of the 20th century. So why reverse 200 years of technology?

Why shoot in black and white?

It can help you with your composition. You will see your subject in a different way, noticing things such as shapes, textures and patterns, and how the light falls on them so this can improve your composition and how you use light. It can help you see things you might have missed in the colour world, for example, the shapes of clouds.

It simplifies your subject. A mass of different colours can be confusing and make it hard for your subject to stand out but if those colours have become shades of grey then your subject is more likely to pop. Also some colours can be distracting, drawing the viewer’s eye away from the subject. Photographing in black and white can remove that distraction.

It can enhance the mood of your subject. Monochrome photography can make a landscape dramatic or a portrait sophisticated. This might be that we are familiar with classic black and white photographs whether they are the work of classic landscape photographers or portraitists.

When black and white might not work

Having praised black and white photography there are occasions when it might not work. Some colours for example have very similar tones so it can be hard to tell them apart in black and white. Take a look at this tulip. The red of the petals have almost the same tone as the green of the leaves they nestle within.

How do you do it?

If this sounds like something you would like to try there are two ways to do it. (Note that I am assuming you are a digital photographer).

First of all you can convert your colour image files to black and white afterwards in the comfort of your own home using the photo editing software of your choice. This has the advantage of giving you complete flexibility over how your images appear.

The better way to do it, though, is to take black and white images in camera. Now you will see your images through the electronic viewfinder or in live view in black and white rather than colour. This will give you the benefits of those reasons for taking monochrome photographs I mentioned above. To do this set the profile on your camera to a monochrome picture style (check your camera manual to see how to do this).

RAW vs JPEG

A word about the image files your camera creates with every photograph you take.

If your camera saves the photographs as RAW files, it will contain all the data your sensor captured, including the colour. You can always switch it back if you don’t think it worked in monochrome. However, if your photographs are saved as jpegs then you will just have the black and white images. But that could be fun in itself, like using a film camera loaded with Ilford FP4 (or a similar black and white film). You don’t get the choice then.

If you are planning to try this you might want to check what file type your camera creates.

Trying black and white for the first time

If you’re trying it out for the first time choose a subject that you are familiar with, maybe something at home. Look at the original object and notice how it appears, then take a look at it through your camera in monochrome mode. How does it look now? Move it around in the light and see how it changes. When you are ready, take a few photographs and see how it comes out. Try it in standard mode as well with colour and compare the two images. What stands out in the monochrome version versus the colour image?

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One final tip. When you are done, switch your camera back to standard mode. Otherwise when you go out taking photographs next time all of your images will still be in monochrome mode!

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For other ideas on how to fall back in love with photography, check out my blog post here: How to fall back in love with photography – Disruption

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Have you lost your enthusiasm for photography?

Do you suffer from photographer’s block?

Watch this space …