How do you decide when to turn a picture black and white? Maybe you just keep all of your pictures in color. For me there are a few things I look at before I determine which way to go on a particular photograph or set.
I rely heavily on opinions in deciding whether to change from color or not. I was having a conversation with someone the other day and he asked why I turned photographs from an event black and white. My response was fairly odd, I didn’t like the color of the grass. I always look at whether all the colors play well together. If for some reason I think the colors are off (even after doing some slight adjustments) the picture gets turned black and white. This is really the ultimate thing with me. If all the colors are really strange together (such as bright red and a pale blue), I can’t stand it. In my mind turning the pictures black and white took away the weird color of the grass, and made them better. However to the person I spoke to, the change did nothing to add to the pictures, just stripped them of color. I went through all 500+ pictures I took of the event to find the ones I turned black and white so that I could upload them to flickr in color as well. With the second look through I still thought the grass was an odd color of green, yet not as bad as I originally thought. There were some pictures that definitely worked best in color, and some that there wasn’t much color to them in the first place so black and white was just fine. I still feel the black and white ones are the best of the set, and really in the end it is up to the photographer to decide what they believe works. You can always change your mind.
Do you like seeing all the colors or would you rather have no color at all?
Maybe I should have started out saying, I just finished a semester of photography classes where I was not allowed to turn in color photographs, and I learned very quickly to like black and white. I really do like black and white pictures. To me the void of color gives photographs a classic look, when done right. I especially love portraits in black and white.
How do you determine when to turn your photographs black and white? Do you like working with black and white photography?
7 Comments
I find that, like in your situation, if the colors don’t fit, I convert it to black and white (although this case is somewhat rare for me since I almost never convert digital color to b&w; I prefer not to…).
It also depends on the subject matter. If it’s something more serious, black and white tends to work quite well.
As for black and white photography itself, I enjoy it very much. I actually prefer black and white photography, but I like b&w film rather than digital. There’s something about the way that the negatives look that I very much prefer (I shoot exclusively in b&w with my 35mm camera).
Personally, I prefer color. However, there are some people that can make black & white work for them. I just believe that each situation can allow for certain things. Not all photos can work in B&W, but I really like seeing landscape and portraits in B&W.
I guess I am saying that I prefer black & white if there is a single person or very few objects in frame, and I also prefer B&W when there are no particular objects being highlighted—again, like scenery.
Anyways, great post Sierra!
Keep it up!
Until now I have never really thought much about why I turn some pictures black and white. Sometimes I think b&w is more dramatic, and sometimes there is a certain mood that I want to capture, I like portraits in b&w for example.
Another great post, keep it up
Usually if the image is either very low contrast or very high contrast, I’ll convert it to black and white.
Low contrast usually means flat colors, so you may as well get rid of em. High contrast usually means washed out colors - and that kind of image usually looks good as black and white anyway, and lets you pay more attention to shape and form.
That’s just a rule of thumb though.
@Duke Luke–When I do film, it is always b/w too. I have found after having a class that dealt mostly w/film that the dark room is actually my friend
I understand how to better edit pictures in Photoshop after taking the class….or at least I think I do 
@James Mowery–You have a good point, minimalistic pictures do very well as b/w
@Chris Garrett– Thank you, and I’ll try
lol
@Eric–Yes! Contrast is very important when deciding when to turn a picture b/w.
I like black and white photography, I especially like it when it enhances the mood of the photograph. Like on really overcast, stormy or big waves crashing type of photos!
@Mandy I love those kind of photos too! I love the drama in them