Black and white

[laura]

I'm just about to start assignment 7 on black and white, and I don't know where to start.:confused::confused:
What makes a great B&W photo?
I have tried converting old images to B&W and they look so dull and boring. I understand there are many ways of converting images in Photoshop, I just haven't figured out how to do it properly yet.
I'm going out on Saturday to try and get take some pics hopefullygood enough to submit, the last thing I want to do is come home with a load of photos I can't use. So I thought I'd find out what I need to look out for, what will work, and what won't work before I go. So I can get the best of my time.
If anyone has any advise I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

[jerryph]

This topic really has few limits. When I did this section, I had just come back from a vacation in Florida, and I recalled while being in the beach that the scenery looked like something that you would see on an old faded postcard. When I came back, this section of the course came up and I tried it a couple different ways.

I took that pic, desaturated it, gave it a bit of an old look and vignetted the heck out of it. The look came out something like an old 60's faded postcard. Looking at it today, of course I would have done a lot more, but THIS (http://www.proudphotography.com/forum/gallery/files/1/0/0/0/small_b_w___beach_buildings.jpg) is what I sent in.

You can take near anything and make it B&W, but I think what works best are pictures of people, landscapes and shots where there is some form of movement.

[umajo]

wow that looks great i aloso am on black and white living in the middle of nowhere does not help finding something to photo black and white :rolleyes:

[laura]

Jerry, it does look very 1960s, I really like it.

[carri]

Laura, the most effective black & white images are the ones that use a full range of tones - from black to white. To be effective a B&W image needs to have contrast. Look for subjects with a good tonal range, doesn't matter what the subject is, the important issue is the tonal range. If your subject in colour is similar in tone (ie blue sky & green grass) then your B&W version will have nothing more than a range of greys and the overall effect will be quite dull.

Also when converting a colour image to black and white, never simply desaturate the image, all this will do is remove the colour information, this does not make an attrative B&W image. You need to use the channel mixer in your editing software to convert each of the colour channels Red, Green & Blue separately, this will give you full control over the range of tones in your final piece.
Hope that helps :)

[carri]

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r254/rivendellstudios/BM2.jpghttp://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r254/rivendellstudios/BM1.jpg

Just thought I'd post an example to help illustrate the point. This is a section of one of my photos, a conversion from colour to B&W. The image on the left has simply been desaturated, the image on the right has been conveted using the channel mixer. Notice how the desaturated image has lost detail where as the image that has had the channels mixed separately has a much fuller range of tone and therefore retains the detail.

There are a few more examples on my website :)

[laura]

Thank you for your reply Carri. Its difficult to start looking at things as tones rather than colours...I think theres going to be a bit of trial and error involved to start with.

Of the two images above, the second one does look so much better.

p.s. your website is great, really great images.