5 Essential Tips for Black and White Photos

Black and white photography is sometimes treated as the 'poor relation' of colour photography. After all, why limit yourself to shades of gray when you can use the entire spectrum of colours?

But in reality a black and white photo can often look even more stunning and captivating than the colour equivalent. Below are five tips to help you choose when to shoot in black and white, and how to get the best images when you do.

1. Shape and Form

Shape and form become more obvious in the absence of colour. Image by Johny hanging head down from the tree.

When you remove colour from an image you can no longer rely on it to provide interest or a focal point in a scene. This may seem obvious but it can be easy to forget. By doing away with colour we also remove one of the most potentially distracting elements in a photo.

Form and shape are all-important in black and white photography. When looking for a good shot, look beyond the colours in a scene and instead focus you attention on the shapes. Arrange them in a way that emphasises the most interesting aspect of the shape, or creates an intriguing composition of different shapes.

2. Contrast

Flying birds with high contrast background

Use contrast to help separate and define shapes. Image by hugo*.

Without differences in colour to separate elements in your scene, you must instead introduce contrasting shades into your black and white photos.

You can use contrast to help your main subject stand out - for example by photographing a light subject against a dark background - and also to add depth by including a variety of tones and shades in your photo.

3. Pattern

Black and white flowers showing their inherent pattern

Here, colour has been removed to make the flower's pattern more prominent. Image by anjan58.

Many patterns, particularly subtle ones, often go unnoticed in colour photos, because the colours draw attention away from the pattern itself. Black and white photography gives you a much better chance of capturing interesting patterns because it focuses the viewer's attention on the shapes formed by the elements in a scene.

4. Texture

Black and white photography focuses the attention of features such as texture. Image by justinKnol.

In the same way that patterns can be lost in colour photography, textures can be too. When we see a colour photo, our mind immediately begins to identify and label the elements in the scene, meaning that we often do not really 'see' the photo, but instead see our mind's interpretation of it.

When we photograph in black and white, the mind no longer has that colour information to work with, and so pays more attention to elements such as texture, making them appear much more prominent.

5. Lighting

Good lighting enhances all aspects of black and white photography. Image by khashayar.z.

Lighting is absolutely key to a good black and white photograph because it affects all of the above elements - shape, contrast, pattern and texture.

When thinking about your lighting, consider how it will influence all of these factors, and choose a setup that enhances as many as possible.

Side lighting often produces the most dramatic black and white photos. It picks out the edges of shapes and increases contrast by adding highlights, and the shadows it creates add interest to the scene as well as enhancing textures and patterns.

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