Hello, and welcome to another Terrific Tuesday! I am your Ambassador for today, and we are
going to talk about something that I think will be a topic of conversation for
decades to come. I am talking about
B&W against Color images!
Last week I had a conversation with two of my co-workers,
one of them asked: “why don’t you do some more black and white
photography? That is the classic and
best type of photography there is, all the classic photographers used black and
white!” Then my other co-worker stepped
in: “are you crazy?! Why bother with black and white when you have color and
all those other software programs that can help him make the images better!”
So the argument lasted for about an hour and it never got
settled, so that made me wonder; what is better, black and white photography or
color?
Before I continue let me tell you all that I have done
images in both formats and they both have their merit, but I am not telling
anyone that one is better than the other!
I feel that everything has its place and there is a place for
everything. With all the equipment we
have today in the DSLR cameras, there is opportunity to do both, however, you
also need to be careful when selecting which one to use.
In today’s market, almost all DSLR cameras are capable of taking
images in both formats, but please be careful, read the instruction manual that
comes with your camera. In some
instances you can select the option to take images in black and white by
selecting that option with a camera, the downside is that once that image is
taken in B&W it cannot be reverted to color. What is an option? Take the images in color and then work on
them on black and white.
Lightroom has a plethora of settings that can help you with
experimenting with the black and white format.
You can see your image in B&W with different tonal settings, and you
can work with the controls to adjust the shadows and highlights in the
image. My main point here is simple,
play and explore with your software until you become proficient in it, the same
way you take pictures after pictures to practice the art and you will become
better each time you do it.
But by now you might be asking: “What about color?” Color of course has its merits and images
that are in color are just as beautiful as the ones in B&W (personal
opinion, keep reading!). There are significant
changes and enhancements that can be made with color images to make them more
visually appealing. Most of you will be
probably be shooting in color most of the time, but remember what I said earlier;
there is a place for everything and everything has its place.
Here are a few samples of B&W imagery against color,
tell me what you think.
The above images were taken at Zilker Botanical Garden in Austin, Texas. As you can see it is the same water lily but changing from color to B&W might have made this image not as interesting.
Ok, what about the top two, which one looks more classy or just better to the eye?
Interesting in seeing
some old-fashioned B&W images? Follow the following link:
Well, I am going to close for now, drop me a line and tell me which one is your preference, and if you have time, tell me why.
Until later then,
Tuesday Ambassador
