Black and White photography for a reason

The first color photograph was developed in 1861 but color photographs didn’t become the dominant form of photography until the 1970s. So most of us took black and white photographs because that was all we had available. Back in the days of my darkroom, I didn’t develop my own color photographs as it was much more involved and required equipment and chemicals specifically for developing color film. Times and temperatures needed to be much more tightly controlled. Fast forward to today. Color photography is the dominant style, but I do still like a nicely done black and white photograph.

I see photographs far too often talk about converting an image to black and white because they had to use high ISO settings, or just because they want to be “creative”, but they merely throw on a preset or some filter and think voila! To me, it takes more than that. Colors are converted to tones of grey. For me, I don’t convert to a black and white just because or as a way to “fix” an image with lots of noise due to high ISOs. Doing so, to me, makes it like a black and white image is something less than its color counterpart. There is a reason why masters did so much dodging and burning on their black and white photographs. It’s about tonal range and contrast.

I feel like the color gets in the way of the story in some photographs which leads me to do a black and white version. Think about it next time you want to do a black and white photograph. Learn to do more than just slapping a filter or preset on an image. Do the black and white conversion the justice you do your color images. Convert the image with a purpose.