The Magic of
Monochrome
P
hotography was
commercially
introduced to the world
somewhere around the year
1839 – about 178 years ago.
In those days there was only
black & white photography.
Colour photography came
about 96 years later,
somewhere in 1935. Back
then, during the B&W
era, photographers made
amazingly beautiful photos in
spite of the fact that camera
lenses and films were of very
poor quality as compared
to what was available in the
later years before the onset of
digital photography.But not everyone likes to
work in black and white. Ask
a group of photographers
whether they love colour or
B&W, and you could actually
start a war of words. Here’s
what a few well-known
names have to say:“We don’t live in a world
that’s black and white” –
Shannon Elizabeth“Kids today don’t watch a
black and white movie” –
Robert Englund“To see in colour is a delight for the eye
but to see in black and white is a delight
for the soul” – Andri Cauldwell“Colour is descriptive. Black and white
is interpretive” – Elliott ErwittThere will always be those for and
against black and white photography.
I read somewhere that more than
30 different black & white films areavailable worldwide. Unfortunately for
most of us, especially in india, films (as
well as processing chemicals) are a rare
comodity today and hence it becomes
even more imperative to learn how
colour images can be converted to B&W.But first things first. Almost all digital
cameras today offer a black & white
mode in the Shooting Menu. If we use
this feature, we don’t have to convert
a colour image to B&W in post-
processing. That cool, isn’t it? Not really.While shooting in B&W mode does
have an advantage (of simplicity), this
method does not give us the results that
could be had if we first shoot in colour
and then convert the images to B&W.In this tutorial we will see few methods
(some not so good and some excellent)
to create black & white images in
Photoshop. But wait. Why should you
know about the ‘not so good’ methods?
You should know about them because
they are incredibly easy and quick.Rohinton MehtaOriginal imageLEARNING
90 http://www.smartphotography.in
Smart PhotographyJuly 2017