Black and White Photography Terms
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Black and white photography is a wonderful form of our chosen art medium, whether done in film or digitally. Most of us will likely be working in digital format, but most of the same black and white photography terms will apply equally to film and digital.
When browsing for black and white photography tips, you have likely come across other terms such as grayscale and monochrome and may be wondering what the differences are. It will also be beneficial to have definitions or explanations of some other terms associated with black and photography.
What Is Grayscale?
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What is grayscale? Grayscale is actually a more precise definition or label for black and white photography. The images we make are rarely 100% white and 100% black, but rather are comprised of several different shades of gray in addition to pure white or pure black. So “grayscale” is simply another way to say “black and white” (or B&W) photography.
There is a nice tool called the grayscale, that photographers used to buy from Kodak that can now be found from dozens of makers, that has a complete scale of steps of gray (or grey in UK spelling) usually marked off in 5% steps.
You can actually still get these from Tiffen on Amazon and other places.. It’s the same thing as the Kodak Q-13 Color Separation Guide and Gray Scale that has been an industry standard measuring tool for decades.
This Gray Scale is a good teaching and learning tool too, for learning about how light and shadow is seen photographically. In addition to the fun of learning, you can also use one as a control method for calibrating your editing monitor and checking how your exposure variations can change how the gray scale appears in grayscale photography.
What Is Monochrome?
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What is monochrome? Is monochrome black and white or grayscale? In photography terms, monochrome refers to something that is all one color, though it can be different strengths of that single color.
So, a B&W image, a grayscale photo, can accurately be referred to as being monochrome since it is made of only one color, gray. Gray separates out to pure white and pure black at the extremes of intensity.
However, not all monochrome images are grayscale or black and white. An image made up solely of shades of red or green is also monochrome. Since lots of the technical side of photography deals with math, we’ll use a math logic method to explain it. All grayscale (black and white) images are monochrome. But not all monochrome images are grayscale.
So, grayscale = monochrome, but monochrome =/= grayscale.
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Zone System
"Public Domain: Tetons by Ansel Adams, 1942 (National Parks Service/NARA)" by pingnews.com
Anyone searching for digital black and white photography tips and wanting to fully understand black and white photography terms really to look at the Zone System, at least for an overall view of it. How in-depth you want to go will be up to each person, but you won’t be disappointed if you spend some serious time on it.
The Zone System was developed by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The results of working within the Zone System for film and paper black and white photography can be seen and are discussed in-depth in several books:
Collectively, these are referred to as the Ansel Adams Photography series. If you’ve read my articles for a while, you know how big a fan I am of Ansel Adams. I think many landscape photographers would point to him and his work as major early influences.
How to Make Black and White Digital Photos
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There are two main methods that we can use to create our black and white or grayscale images digitally. One is in the camera and the other is in the post-processing program we use.
Capturing B&W in camera is fairly simple, you just switch to the black and white or grayscale mode in your camera menu. Funny thing is, in some cameras, this mode may be labeled monochrome. Don’t let that worry you, the monochrome will be grayscale.
This often creates a JPEG file of the image. Which is fine for casual shooting, but I like to capture in RAW and then use post processing to convert to grayscale. Lightroom has easy sliders that help you control how the image gets turned to B&W.
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What I like about this method is the control available for manipulating the contrast, the grayscale itself, and even the relationships in grayscale between different colors. This is also a fantastic learning tool for seeing how much difference attenuating the colors has on the final image.
For instance, by adjusting the sliders for blue down and red up, you can turn a blue sky virtually black, which makes puffy white clouds just seem to POP out of the image. Adjusting the green slider up and down has a great effect on foliage. You can even adjust so that it looks like an infrared image.
And since you captured in RAW, your original file still has all the color and exposure information available, allowing you to experiment again with different settings or to make a color final image. Which you can’t do if you capture a JPEG in the camera mode for grayscale with most brands.
You will see additional tools in the black and white convention menu of your post processing program. Some programs will adjust contrast separately, some have more fine tuning for the color sliders, some will allow adjusting exposure globally and others split it into shadow, midtones, and highlights, some have both styles of control.
The Art of Black and White
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The earliest surviving photographic image is a monochrome image. Most of the history of photography is dominated by black and white, sometimes monochrome such as the sepia tone of daguerreotype metal plates and tintype.
A huge amount of pics in your family albums are likely black and white. Many of the images we love from the old masters are black and white. So much has been done with regard to the art of craft of black and white photography.
With such a rich history of the art of grayscale and monochrome photography, it makes a lot of sense to look into how B&W photography can be accomplished digitally. Besides that, it is incredibly fun and rewarding. Seriously, just try it out for yourself!
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