BLACK & WHITE TECHNIQUE (3)

Make the most of light

Light has different meaning in black & white
photography compared to colour. When you take
a colour photograph, the light can actually have
a colour of its own – warm, as at sunrise and
sunset, or cold as on a cloudy or foggy day.
Colour film records these variations in the colour
of light even if the eye can’t see them. Similarly,
colour film records artificial lighting in a literal
way, so tungsten light produces an orange cast
and fluorescent a green cast.
Black & white film is clearly incapable of doing
this, which can have both positive and negative
effects on your photography.
From a positive point of view, there is no
colour to influence the mood of your pictures, so
you can shoot portraits or candids indoors in
artificial lighting and produce striking images
without worrying about a sickly orange cast
spoiling them.
The type of lighting that would normally
produce rather drab, boring colour photographs
– for example, an outdoor scene on a dreary
overcast day – can produce wonderfully
evocative black & white photographs, enabling
you to exploit conditions that would leave colour
photographers heading for home.
The downside is that you have to work harder
with light when shooting mono, because the
colour of the light cannot contribute to the
mood of the final picture – a black & white
sunset shot simply cannot compete with one
shot in colour, because without the golden glow
much of its emotional appeal will be lost.
Fortunately, this factor can also work in your
favour, because in using light to define shape,
texture, pattern and form – the elements on
which black & white photographs rely – your eye
for a picture can only get better.

BLACK & WHITE TECHNIQUE (2)

Composition

Although you can change the composition of a
black & white photograph by cropping it during
printing, don’t let this fact lull you into a false
sense of security, as it leads to sloppy technique.
Instead, aim to compose each picture
in-camera exactly as you want it to be printed.
Think carefully about the way the lines, shapes,
patterns and textures are arranged, so they
relate expressively to one another. Some
photographers, including the more arty types,
even print their black & white pictures with the
film rebate showing – evidence that the image
hasn’t been cropped.
You needn’t go to such measures (although
the technique can look very effective) and
there’s nothing wrong with cropping an image if
it improves the end result, but being disciplined
about composition when you take the picture in
the first place will not only produce better
compositions, it will also make you a more
considered photographer overall.

BLACK & WHITE TECHNIQUE (1)

Learning to visualise how colours translate to
grey tones is the first step in honing your
black & white technique, because it will help
you to understand what the final image may
look like when printed – and guide you towards
making certain decisions to influence that
final image.
However, there are other factors to consider
when taking pictures in black & white.

Metering and exposure
Perhaps the most important is how you expose a
black & white photograph, because that will
govern how much detail is recorded in the
negative and, consequently, how easy that
negative is to print.
The old adage is that when shooting in colour,
expose for the highlights, and when shooting in
black & white, expose for the shadows. This is
not a bad technique to adopt, but unless you
understand how camera meters work, it’s likely
to cause more harm than good.
A much simpler approach in normal lighting
conditions is to expose for a mid-tone, then let
everything else fall into place around it. This
should produce a negative that contains a full
range of detail and tone from white through to
black, which you can print on a normal grade of
paper – grade 2.
Most modern camera meters will naturally set
a mid-tone exposure in average lighting, as that
is what they are designed to do, so you could
simply go along with what your camera sets.
The other option is to take a spot reading from a
specific part of the scene that represents a midtone.
To visualise this, think of something that
has the same density as a mid-grey colour –
well-lit green grass, red brick and tarmac are
common examples. Alternatively, hold an 18 per
cent grey card, which is a perfect mid-tone, in
the same light as that falling on your subject,
and meter from it.
Where the lighting isn’t ‘average’ you need to
make a decision about how you wish to interpret
the scene and expose accordingly.
For example, if you photograph a tree against
bright sky, you need to decide if the mid-tones
and shadow areas are more important, or the
highlights. If you expose for a mid-tone, the
bright sky will be overexposed, and on a normal
print this would produce a high-key backlit
effect. However, if you expose for the sky, the
mid-tones and shadows will be underexposed,
and on a straight print the tree would come out
as a silhouette or near-silhouette.
If in doubt in situations like this, you can
always make a series of exposures then decide
later which interpretation you prefer and choose
the best negative for printing. You also have a
large degree of creative licence in the darkroom,
so if you change your mind it’s usually possible
to achieve the effect you want by using different
contrast grades of paper, varying the print
exposure and giving more or less exposure to
certain parts of the image.

WHICH FILM FOR BLACK & WHITE PHOTO

WHICH FILM FOR
BLACK & WHITE?
The choice of black & white film is wider
now than ever before. In practice, however,
there isn’t a massive difference between
one brand or another, so unless you want to
get very technical the main decision you
need to make is which speed to use.
As with colour, the slower the film is,
generally, the finer the grain and the
greater the resolving power, so having
decided what you want the film for, you can
then choose a suitable speed.

Slow films
If you require the best image quality, and intend
making big enlargements, choose a slow speed
film such as Agfa Agfapan APX 25 (ISO 25),
Kodak Technical Pan (ISO 32) or Ilford Pan F Plus
(ISO 50). All three produce incredibly sharp
negatives with amazing detail and almost
invisible grain. The downside is you will need to
use a tripod in all but the brightest conditions.

Medium-speed films
Films in the ISO 100-125 range are a good choice
if you require high image quality without
compromising speed too much. Ilford’s Delta 100
and FP4 Plus, Kodak T-Max 100 and Agfa
Agfapan APX 100, among others, all provide fine
grain and sharpness, and at enlargements up to
16x12in will produce excellent image quality,
while still allowing you to take handheld pictures.

Fast films
Today’s crops of ISO 400 films are capable of
amazing quality, making them the most popular
speed for general use. The more modern films
have the edge – Ilford Delta 400 and HP5 Plus,
Kodak T-Max 400 and Agfa Agfapan APX 400.
The older emulsions such as Kodak Tri-X and Fuji
Neopan 400 aren’t as fine-grained, but still
produce excellent results and are much-loved.
On prints up to 10x8in, grain is fine, but any
bigger and grain becomes more obvious.

Ultra-fast films
If you need to take handheld pictures in lowlight,
then an ultra-fast film will be more suitable.
There are three to choose from – Fuji Neopan
1600, Kodak T-Max 3200 and Ilford Delta 3200,
with speeds of ISO 1600 and ISO 3200. Although
these films offer high quality, they are very
grainy. Many photographers see this as a
creative benefit, however, and use these films
specifically for their coarse grain.

LEARNING TO SEE IN BLACK & WHITE

At a time when colour film technology is at its
peak, and the world we live in is more colourful
than ever before, the idea of taking pictures in
black & white may seem a little strange.
Recently, however, mono has experienced
something of a renaissance. Not only is it widely
used for advertising and fashion, but more and
more enthusiast photographers are also
enjoying the benefits of shooting in black &
white. The main attraction of working in mono is
that by stripping colour from an image, you
divorce it from reality so photographs become a
more effective means of self-expression. Instead
of relying on realism and familiarity, they
become abstracts using patterns, textures and
the play of light and shade to gain appeal.
Photographs take on a different meaning, and
we can see into much more with the distraction
of colour taken away. This applies to all subjects,
be it portraits, landscape, still-life or architecture.
An additional benefit is that black & white is a
complete cycle. Your involvement with colour
photography usually ends the moment a roll of
exposed film is removed from your camera. But
in black & white, the creative process is only just
beginning at that point, because after
developing the film you then get to work in the
darkroom, printing the photograph according to
how you visualised it as the time.
This guide covers various topics, from learning
to see in black & white, choosing, using and
processing film and making your first print.
The biggest hurdle to overcome when shooting
black & white for the first time is understanding
how a colour scene will translate to black, white
and the numerous grey tones in-between.
A good way to learn initially is by shooting the
same scenes or subjects in black & white and
colour, so you can compare the two images and
note how certain colours record as grey tones.
Ideally, set up a shot or look for a scene that
contains a wide range of different colours – reds,
yellows, oranges, greens and blues. What you
learn will prove invaluable in the future as it will
help you visualise if a scene will work well in
black & white, and also what you may need to do
at both the taking stage and the printing stage
to ensure a successful image is produced.
For example, if you photograph red and green
objects together, their relative difference in
colour creates a contrast that makes each item
stand out clearly. In mono, however, red and
green records as similar grey tones so that
contrast is reduced, and the impact of the
photograph with it. When photographing
landscapes, you need to consider the way the
sky will record when you expose for the ground,
and how the many different shades of green in
the scene will translate. With still-lifes, you need
to pre-visualise how different objects will relate
to each other when converted to grey tones.
Self-expression
Of course, while this practical knowledge will be
of use, you shouldn’t live and die by it. One of
the great joys of black & white photography is
that it allows you to express your own creative
vision far more than colour can, so detailed
technical accuracy may be far less important to
you than the overall mood and feel of the image.
Also, while what you capture on the original
negative is important, 99 per cent of the time
it’s what you do with the image in the darkroom
that counts, because it’s in the printing that a
black & white photo really comes to life. You can
use different contrast grades of paper to control
the way highlights, shadows and mid-tones
relate to each other, for instance. You can lighten
or darken selective areas of the print to change
its tonal balance. You can also crop the image to
alter the composition, tone it and so on.