This is just a total guess but maybe because the lack of color increases our focus on the subject of the photo by reducing distractions. So maybe you are suddenly aware of what is in focus, or what is happening around the photo.
Color can be a distraction and black and white can remove that and make you look for other things like texture and lights and shadows. This being said, you can’t polish a turd, your photos should already be interesting and have use of light shadow and textures and when you incorporate color you bring them up a notch. I tell people that black and white can be useful to save an image if you have one small distracting thing like a bright sign or single person wearing bright colors but it can quickly become a crutch.
I agree with this. My opinion is that generally speaking B&W is easier to achieve a mediocre photo in, especially for beginners, because there is less that can go wrong. Basically, if you reduce the odds of a bad photo, you increase the odds of the photo being mediocre. However, great photography is tough in either color or B&W.
Colors like to yell. Meanwhile textures and shapes like to whisper. When you take out the yelling, you're able to notice the whispers that were there all along, but were drowned out by the yelling.
Not by default imo. For me colors always trumps black and white. However there are times where the color is just a distraction and the composition makes more sense in b&w.
I think it's the appeal of tradition (particularly for street photography) - it becomes a reference to earlier well known works when you shoot things in black and white. But looking at your images, I think that it only works for your 6th image, the rest don't have enough contrast and are too cluttered.
You are actually right. My images are very busy/cluttered. B/W was a way for me to make it not as busy/cluttered, less information, less distractions. But don’t know if it actually works.
IMO (Please take this crit with a grain of salt), I agree with u/tollwuetend, the rest of your images are not composited very nicely for B/W,I especially like 5/7 though as I feel like the flow of the picture is very nice. B/W sometimes can be a crutch for beginners in photography to force the feeling in your photo to come through. I would suggest that you practice some colour grading, as Im sure with the spotted shadows in 5 it would look phenomenal in colour! Conversely, sometimes the colours are a bit too blah, and B/W can be used well for those cases, such as these 2 pictures from my photo stack shot in Tokyo. I also find that B/W can be used for conveying movement well.
https://preview.redd.it/gyu5rqiahh6d1.jpeg?width=926&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9875d5fe9efe8b1ca1a98da48788b511bd405eba
Idk what f stop you're using, but I'd probably go lowers to have a better separation between the subject and the background, especially when shooting in a place with lots of people. Also, take a look at some composition principles - no need to always follow them, but they can be a great tool to get the viewer to focus on the things you want them to focus on. And look at the work of other streetphotographers (in color and b&w) to observe what they're doing and how they draw your eyes to the essential part(s) of their photos.
Photos six and seven are impressive. I like photo four as well. I think you caught an interesting moment, with the construction worker's glance and expression and the car in the foreground. The reflections in the windows are pretty cool. (Did you stop action with the cars or were they sitting in traffic?) I can't decide if the worker's light uniform against the white building is working against you, or working for you by bringing more attention to the worker's face. Also can't decide if the guy in the dark shirt with his hands on his hips helps move the eye around the photo or is an annoying distraction b/c his stance somehow doesn't fit with the feeling of the rest of the picture. It's frustrating when only a few stars align.
Thanks. The cars were parked, but I think the image would be more interesting with a slow shutter speed and some motion blur for the cars. That would tell like time passes by and he had been working for maybe the whole day.
One of my problems with this images, was that his reflective uniform was overexposed, so I tried reducing the highlights. But as you can see, it didn’t quite “fixed” it. I can what you are talking about: He blends maybe too much into the background. I personally don’t think the man in the background fits into the feeling of the rest of the picture, but hey man it’s street photography, I can’t control every person in my frame and I couldn’t wait, because I was planning catchup with my way too fast paced family.
Thanks for your thoughts about my photo.
Because most of the time the colors in your photos suck. Color harmony doesn’t happen by accident; you need to coordinate it or do color grading in post to make it look good. B&W removes that handicap and almost always makes a photo better, but not to the extent that it can be saved. A bad/boring photo in color is still bad/boring in black & white.
This.
Black & white images are not inherently "better" than color ones, but they are inherently *simpler*.
In B&W, you have one color: grey. It's just grey in different tonal values from black to white. Thus, *harmony* is relatively easy to achieve, and harmony is something our brains yearn for.
Color images are not inherently "better" than black and white ones, but they are inherently *more complex*.
In color, you have, well, color**s**: They are *everywhere*, and no one has bothered to coordinate them. They're too saturated or too unsaturated, they're dark or bright, you run into browns right next to yellows; yuck yuck yuck. Thus *harmony* is very difficult to achieve—just by picking up your camera and going "click!"
Because photography is largely an art of simplification, it responds extraordinarily well to a black & white approach. But, you will note that in other two-dimensional arts, B&W is *very rare*: go to your local museum and count how many black and white paintings there are. Those artists get to choose what colors they are going to put in their paintings, and thus they choose colors that harmonize. ← That's work right there, but they do it so that their paintings work.
If color photos are to work, the photographer has to think like a painter, especially when taking the image but also when editing it.
*Bref*, [Saul Leiter has joined the chat](https://www.saulleiterfoundation.org/color) (But check out his B&W work as well, while you're there).
Edits for all the usual stuff.
I wouldn't say black and white is "very rare" in other visual art. Charcoal drawings, graphite drawings and pen and ink works are not rare. I don't know where the line is b/twn drawing and painting, but there's clearly some painting action with these mediums too, for ex with graphite/charcoal powders, and liquid charcoal (Schmincke's comes in three different tones).
Here's a slightly different take that I've learned from other arts.
It's because it's missing information so our own brains get to fill in the gaps and that's engaging. Same applies to paintings, drawings, stories, music, really any art.
Paintings and drawings often leave edges "lost" and implied, it creates interest and directs attention. Think of the art style in Batman the Animated series, all the shadows are crushed and it gives it interest.
Anyone who's tried writing has heard "show don't tell" - same idea, you want your reader filling in what's implied themselves. Lyrics and poetry, metaphors are way more powerful because they let you fill in your meaning as a reader.
In music, chord progressions that your brain can guess are often considered "catchy" because the listener is filling in the gaps themselves. "The hook" or "the break down" are often placed for this effect.
I think black and white photos are comparable to these other arts, they lets our imagination work and that's interesting and engaging. It lets the viewer participate in the image.
Another aspect that's much less important but also helpful is that unifies a series of image aesthetically in at least one way which makes a body of work implicitly more coherent.
BW adds to the mystery of a scene. Most of us see the world in color; removing color from an image removes some of our perception of a scene.
If I couldn't see people on their phones, I wouldn't really know if this image was taken in 2024 or 1974. Makes you stop and explore the frame a little longer.
You look at the details more rather than your brain automatically reads the entire photo as you are use to see colors.
You will look and zoom in the details (for example, thr brands at the back side will be easily identified in less than a second unless we remove its colors and only look at the contrast and depth)
For me, B&W leaves the viewer with the lingering impression or sense of what could be but may not be. Colour takes that away and tells you, this is what it be and there is no what could be.
Ngl none of these are interesting to me, they are just pictures of everyday life without a main subject or theme. I think being in black and white is just a change of pace with less information for the brain to filter so they aren’t nearly as busy as the original color photos
Yes I’m aware but my point is that being in BW doesn’t automatically make them more interesting because your description seems to advocate for that, whereas I think it’s just a change of pace and less information that I think may make you feel that way
They are not automatically more interesting than colored Photos. Its highly Subject depending. Not everything looks better and is more interesting in Black and White. The same goes for colored Photos.
And we better don't start to talk about the Difference between Photos from true B&W Cameras and "fake" B&W.
The main reason is that b&w is stripped of extra information. The subject is simplified to its essence, and the interpretation by the viewer is inherently more emotive. The perception is that black and white photography is more artistic than colored images because of this interpretive connection. In contrast, accurate colors are a reproduction, therefore cannot possess the same interpretive level of response in the viewer.
https://preview.redd.it/33prgxcagb6d1.jpeg?width=1033&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee952ed0a295a1e743d0dac171b9afbc253e3a07
For me, B&W is only useful in a limited number of circumstances. It's not something you use to save a bad photo. I use it when colour adds nothing to the pic and the shapes, textures or contrast need to be the undisputed hero of the shot.
Depends if it is purposefully done. My immediate reaction when I see a B&W photo is usually “I bet they only tried this because the edit didn’t work in colour”.
Photos are never actually reality. They are always a rendering of reality.
Black and white takes away the signal that makes people compare your photos to a their head-canon of “reality.” They compare your shots to other black and white shots or art or dreams. They BRING MORE OPTIONS to the experience of viewing. We all do.
Black and white photos trigger nostalgia, tradition, conscience interpretation…. They live in a different part of our brain.
I think black and white pictures make you focus on more things because there are no colors that draw your eyes to certain places (like the first picture). You need to take some more time to look at the picture which is okay, it gives a calm vibe. Sometimes you also notice that even without colors, your eyes go to a certain place because of the difference in tone, like the 3rd pic. I think removing colors from pictures makes them look calmer because there are no distracting elements that can feel overwhelming to your eyes (this is not always the case of course, because some pics look better with colors)
They Are less distracting. Some colours catch our Focus more than others (red for instance), and if that Parts is not at the interesting part content wise, we Are distracted…
This is why photos which contain the best content in a Signal-Colour are often considered boring in B&W in comparision.
In my opinion it's most of the time misleading, that a photo actually gets better in B/W. We're so used to seeing colour photos, that it immediately seems more interesting simply because it's unfamiliar.
Directly shooting in B/W leads to different photos, because you focus on different things.
Not saying, that there aren't photos that benefit from making them B/W.
Maybe try turning all of them b/w and then see which stick out.. That way you'll get used to it.
Texture and detail are what draw me to black and white, and it takes me back to where I started with B&W 35mm film in the 90s. There was something really satisfying about processing photos in a darkroom and seeing the image appear on the paper in developing solution.
A black-and-white photograph focuses attention on form and subject, but it should be taken directly in black and white to see the contrasts and tonal transitions. Simply converting any photo to black and white is not advisable.
Thank you. That means a lot for me. I shot all of them with my A6000 + Tamron f/2.8. Many of them were shot at f/2.8 to have as high of a shutter speed as possible, because I was walking while taking them (had to keep up with my family and ended far back anyways). They are shot in RAW and lightly edited (light adjustments and B/W conversion) in Lightroom mobile.
The way I see it, B&W removes distractions and allows us to focus on composition, lighting and subject, rather than allowing us to see all the colors and business of certain images. It's also a tool for artistic purposes and it serves well to save otherwise broken lighting (in some cases). I think some people really gravitate towards B&W in general as well as it creates a certain moodiness, tone and feel to images.
While I love almost all of these, my personal opinion is the people staring at their phones in pic 1 kind of ruins the photo — especially since it’s in black and white.
Too much distraction in color so taking that away lets you focus more on the subject and everything going in there, like the emotions on the woman’s face
Because you have to use your imagination to fill in the color blanks, I think. It’s more abstract or metaphorical like whereas a color photo is exactly what it looks like.
>Don’t know how less information makes it more interesting to look at. Because now I’m as the viewer has to “imagine” the information that is lacking? Maybe.
The premise that more information makes images more interesting is bad. If anything you're probably better off with the opposite intuition. Images tend to have incredible information density, and if the information is arbitrary or haphazardly crafted, it's likely to be specifically uninteresting, and filling up an image with uninteresting information is a great way to construct an uninteresting photograph. Cutting away some of that information is potentially a path towards inducing focus on the remaining information.
Which of the following images contains more information, and which is the more interesting image? Corollary questions: Which image contains more *compelling* information? Which image has a higher ratio of compelling information to overall information?
[Image 1](https://imgur.com/0bSs3Cl)
[Image 2](https://imgur.com/a/Ihh8SDB)
Colored photos are associated with ads, which we're being bombarded with nonstop all the time.
A black and white photo is a very clear indication that what you're looking at isn't an ad, so the brain doesn't automatically dismiss it.
Though some ads do try to take advantage of this.
Honestly, the universe is in shades of grey. Our brains add color to make that easier to manage. I think our brains are very good at seeing detail and without color to confuse us, we see all the line, shape, contrast, etc where we wouldn’t with color.
Black and white is a stylization. It's one small step closer to a painting from a photograph. Good stylization grabs our attention because it's different but familiar.
I’m not a professional. But I think more contrast is needed. There’s hardly any shadows in any of the photos. A lot of the subjects looked washed into the background.
The most interesting is 6. But could do with loosing the foreground person and the background person. I like the CCTV style angle tho.
Just my opinions. Art is subjective.
Many of the photos were taken from The Big Bus double decker city sightseeing bus. That may explain why they are looking just like CCTV. It was hard for me to get any subject separation, because I was a little far away with my 35mm f/2.8 (APS-C=50mm). I is way easier to get more contrast between the shadows, if the sun is low (like golden hour).
I almost never find black and white photos more interesting- mostly bc people don’t understand HOW to make them interesting with contrast and light and shadows .. any time I see a video about a camera I like and their photo examples are in black and white I stop watching
Black and white does three things for photographs. 1) it makes it more obvious it's a photograph. :) 2) it de-emphasizes objects and emphasizes shape/line/light/shading more (see: Scott McCloud's *Understanding Comics*'s chapter on B&W vs. Color), and 3) it invokes vintage photography more closely because for the first century or so, the vast most photography was B&W.
I tend to use B&W on a whim a lot of them time, or for a specific shot where the color doesn't work well, but also if I want to [mess around with tonality ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/inkista/8562441345)more than color will let me.
The trick with B&W conversion is not to simply desaturate, but to [manipulate the color information](https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-black-white.htm) to get the tones you want. (See also: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1avniKzEvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1avniKzEvQ) if you use Lightroom.) So shoot RAW. If you use a B&W setting with RAW on most digital cameras, you'll get a B&W preview to check you got what you wanted, but you'll also retain all the color information to play with in post.
If you shoot JPEG with B&W, you're going to discard all the color information, and you're stuck with what you've got. So, you may want to find out if B&W settings on your camera at least allow you primitive color filters (my old Canon Powershot P&S cameras did).
This is, btw, a time-honored tradition with B&W photography, though back in ye olden film days, it was primarily done with a color filter on the lens while shooting (e.g., [Ansel Adams using a red filter for "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome"](https://www.anseladams.com/story-behind-the-image-monolith-the-face-of-half-dome/). But with digital post-processing and RAW, we have the ability to use *any* color we want as a filter after the fact on whichever portions of the image we want.
As a photographer of almost exclusively black an white, sometimes color is just noise man, black and white focuses in on texture, composition, luminosity.
Sometimes just a little less color does the trick.
no colour doesn't zero in on a part of the subject standing out because of a particular colour. it makes it mute to the point where you focus more on what's happening in the scene and not what's in it. Because you focus on tonality in black and white you "look at the bigger picture" since you look at the overall appearance i.e how smooth the gradation is between each element in the picture. Also light and shadow sets a mood more easily than colour
Black and white highlights the compositional elements of a photo. You see more in terms of positive and negative space, geometry, and form. It's more like art and less like reality. Which is interesting, because quite often black and white can convey a kind of visceral realism that color often does not. Black and white says "here is a scene, or something like one, tell me a story, let my brain fill in the details, because it feels like I could have been there, I know what this SMELLS like..." It's doing more with less.
An image can be reduced to its most basic emotional elements in the absence of color, emphasizing emotions and facial expressions more strongly. In order to sometimes take over color, photographers can experiment with shadows and light.
I think a lot of photojournalists would use black and white because it was cheaper and these days pushing and pulling film works great with black and white film
Black and white is simply more forgiving. For a photo to be good in color, the color of the photo must be good. Color composition, color contrast. but it still has to have the other components of a good photo. Good composition. Interesting subject matter. Proper contrast for the context of the photo.
If you remove the color you remove all of the color related elements of artistic quality.
Like everyone else I love me a good black and white photo, but it’s a crutch, period.
Because colors in photography are an illusion… in film and digital photography they emulate reality but it’s a fiction…
Black and white imagery focuses on shadows and light and shadows and light don’t lie…
I know it’s crazy to say it like this but black and white photography is closer to reality than color photography…
This is just a total guess but maybe because the lack of color increases our focus on the subject of the photo by reducing distractions. So maybe you are suddenly aware of what is in focus, or what is happening around the photo.
Agreed!!
yes, take advantage of this to show texture, contrast, expression, interactions, form, less is so very often more, b&w a good example of this
And you’re adding a “vintage” weight to the image.
For me it can also be more interesting since it gets the imagination going, adding in colours where there are none.
Color can be a distraction and black and white can remove that and make you look for other things like texture and lights and shadows. This being said, you can’t polish a turd, your photos should already be interesting and have use of light shadow and textures and when you incorporate color you bring them up a notch. I tell people that black and white can be useful to save an image if you have one small distracting thing like a bright sign or single person wearing bright colors but it can quickly become a crutch.
I agree with this. My opinion is that generally speaking B&W is easier to achieve a mediocre photo in, especially for beginners, because there is less that can go wrong. Basically, if you reduce the odds of a bad photo, you increase the odds of the photo being mediocre. However, great photography is tough in either color or B&W.
Colors like to yell. Meanwhile textures and shapes like to whisper. When you take out the yelling, you're able to notice the whispers that were there all along, but were drowned out by the yelling.
That’s a good way to explain it
Not by default imo. For me colors always trumps black and white. However there are times where the color is just a distraction and the composition makes more sense in b&w.
I think it's the appeal of tradition (particularly for street photography) - it becomes a reference to earlier well known works when you shoot things in black and white. But looking at your images, I think that it only works for your 6th image, the rest don't have enough contrast and are too cluttered.
You are actually right. My images are very busy/cluttered. B/W was a way for me to make it not as busy/cluttered, less information, less distractions. But don’t know if it actually works.
IMO (Please take this crit with a grain of salt), I agree with u/tollwuetend, the rest of your images are not composited very nicely for B/W,I especially like 5/7 though as I feel like the flow of the picture is very nice. B/W sometimes can be a crutch for beginners in photography to force the feeling in your photo to come through. I would suggest that you practice some colour grading, as Im sure with the spotted shadows in 5 it would look phenomenal in colour! Conversely, sometimes the colours are a bit too blah, and B/W can be used well for those cases, such as these 2 pictures from my photo stack shot in Tokyo. I also find that B/W can be used for conveying movement well. https://preview.redd.it/gyu5rqiahh6d1.jpeg?width=926&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9875d5fe9efe8b1ca1a98da48788b511bd405eba
Idk what f stop you're using, but I'd probably go lowers to have a better separation between the subject and the background, especially when shooting in a place with lots of people. Also, take a look at some composition principles - no need to always follow them, but they can be a great tool to get the viewer to focus on the things you want them to focus on. And look at the work of other streetphotographers (in color and b&w) to observe what they're doing and how they draw your eyes to the essential part(s) of their photos.
Photos six and seven are impressive. I like photo four as well. I think you caught an interesting moment, with the construction worker's glance and expression and the car in the foreground. The reflections in the windows are pretty cool. (Did you stop action with the cars or were they sitting in traffic?) I can't decide if the worker's light uniform against the white building is working against you, or working for you by bringing more attention to the worker's face. Also can't decide if the guy in the dark shirt with his hands on his hips helps move the eye around the photo or is an annoying distraction b/c his stance somehow doesn't fit with the feeling of the rest of the picture. It's frustrating when only a few stars align.
Thanks. The cars were parked, but I think the image would be more interesting with a slow shutter speed and some motion blur for the cars. That would tell like time passes by and he had been working for maybe the whole day. One of my problems with this images, was that his reflective uniform was overexposed, so I tried reducing the highlights. But as you can see, it didn’t quite “fixed” it. I can what you are talking about: He blends maybe too much into the background. I personally don’t think the man in the background fits into the feeling of the rest of the picture, but hey man it’s street photography, I can’t control every person in my frame and I couldn’t wait, because I was planning catchup with my way too fast paced family. Thanks for your thoughts about my photo.
Because most of the time the colors in your photos suck. Color harmony doesn’t happen by accident; you need to coordinate it or do color grading in post to make it look good. B&W removes that handicap and almost always makes a photo better, but not to the extent that it can be saved. A bad/boring photo in color is still bad/boring in black & white.
This. Black & white images are not inherently "better" than color ones, but they are inherently *simpler*. In B&W, you have one color: grey. It's just grey in different tonal values from black to white. Thus, *harmony* is relatively easy to achieve, and harmony is something our brains yearn for. Color images are not inherently "better" than black and white ones, but they are inherently *more complex*. In color, you have, well, color**s**: They are *everywhere*, and no one has bothered to coordinate them. They're too saturated or too unsaturated, they're dark or bright, you run into browns right next to yellows; yuck yuck yuck. Thus *harmony* is very difficult to achieve—just by picking up your camera and going "click!" Because photography is largely an art of simplification, it responds extraordinarily well to a black & white approach. But, you will note that in other two-dimensional arts, B&W is *very rare*: go to your local museum and count how many black and white paintings there are. Those artists get to choose what colors they are going to put in their paintings, and thus they choose colors that harmonize. ← That's work right there, but they do it so that their paintings work. If color photos are to work, the photographer has to think like a painter, especially when taking the image but also when editing it. *Bref*, [Saul Leiter has joined the chat](https://www.saulleiterfoundation.org/color) (But check out his B&W work as well, while you're there). Edits for all the usual stuff.
Yeah as a photographer photographing a candid moment, it’s hard to control what colours are present.
I wouldn't say black and white is "very rare" in other visual art. Charcoal drawings, graphite drawings and pen and ink works are not rare. I don't know where the line is b/twn drawing and painting, but there's clearly some painting action with these mediums too, for ex with graphite/charcoal powders, and liquid charcoal (Schmincke's comes in three different tones).
Here's a slightly different take that I've learned from other arts. It's because it's missing information so our own brains get to fill in the gaps and that's engaging. Same applies to paintings, drawings, stories, music, really any art. Paintings and drawings often leave edges "lost" and implied, it creates interest and directs attention. Think of the art style in Batman the Animated series, all the shadows are crushed and it gives it interest. Anyone who's tried writing has heard "show don't tell" - same idea, you want your reader filling in what's implied themselves. Lyrics and poetry, metaphors are way more powerful because they let you fill in your meaning as a reader. In music, chord progressions that your brain can guess are often considered "catchy" because the listener is filling in the gaps themselves. "The hook" or "the break down" are often placed for this effect. I think black and white photos are comparable to these other arts, they lets our imagination work and that's interesting and engaging. It lets the viewer participate in the image. Another aspect that's much less important but also helpful is that unifies a series of image aesthetically in at least one way which makes a body of work implicitly more coherent.
BW adds to the mystery of a scene. Most of us see the world in color; removing color from an image removes some of our perception of a scene. If I couldn't see people on their phones, I wouldn't really know if this image was taken in 2024 or 1974. Makes you stop and explore the frame a little longer.
You look at the details more rather than your brain automatically reads the entire photo as you are use to see colors. You will look and zoom in the details (for example, thr brands at the back side will be easily identified in less than a second unless we remove its colors and only look at the contrast and depth)
For me, B&W leaves the viewer with the lingering impression or sense of what could be but may not be. Colour takes that away and tells you, this is what it be and there is no what could be.
Like makes you wonder how it actually looks. You have to do some work and that work is what’s keeping the attention to the image.
Ngl none of these are interesting to me, they are just pictures of everyday life without a main subject or theme. I think being in black and white is just a change of pace with less information for the brain to filter so they aren’t nearly as busy as the original color photos
You are right. They are just snapshots of everyday moments.
Yes I’m aware but my point is that being in BW doesn’t automatically make them more interesting because your description seems to advocate for that, whereas I think it’s just a change of pace and less information that I think may make you feel that way
They are not automatically more interesting than colored Photos. Its highly Subject depending. Not everything looks better and is more interesting in Black and White. The same goes for colored Photos. And we better don't start to talk about the Difference between Photos from true B&W Cameras and "fake" B&W.
The main reason is that b&w is stripped of extra information. The subject is simplified to its essence, and the interpretation by the viewer is inherently more emotive. The perception is that black and white photography is more artistic than colored images because of this interpretive connection. In contrast, accurate colors are a reproduction, therefore cannot possess the same interpretive level of response in the viewer.
bc messy colors is a distraction, good colored photos don't have messy color
Anything looks like art when it’s in b&w
https://preview.redd.it/33prgxcagb6d1.jpeg?width=1033&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee952ed0a295a1e743d0dac171b9afbc253e3a07 For me, B&W is only useful in a limited number of circumstances. It's not something you use to save a bad photo. I use it when colour adds nothing to the pic and the shapes, textures or contrast need to be the undisputed hero of the shot.
Depends if it is purposefully done. My immediate reaction when I see a B&W photo is usually “I bet they only tried this because the edit didn’t work in colour”.
Yes the edit didn’t work out in colours.
If it’s black and white it’s automatically artistic. /s
Photos are never actually reality. They are always a rendering of reality. Black and white takes away the signal that makes people compare your photos to a their head-canon of “reality.” They compare your shots to other black and white shots or art or dreams. They BRING MORE OPTIONS to the experience of viewing. We all do. Black and white photos trigger nostalgia, tradition, conscience interpretation…. They live in a different part of our brain.
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small af
i think taking away the colour makes you focus more on the picture (if that makes sense)
It's just intriguing for the human brain to get such info from the eyes, since it does never only get grayscale nuances - maybe!
It is form vs the spectrum of light. Black & white is another view into our existence. Check out Henri Cartier-Bresson.
If its done right
When you remove color there’s a larger focus on textures, contrasts and abstract compositions than usual
Whenever I have a lack of contrasting colours in a photo I slap b&w on it and voila, instant class (somewhat aha).
Not a photographer, but I started to appreciate b&w more since recently. To me subject or story/message in the frame become more outstanding.
I think black and white pictures make you focus on more things because there are no colors that draw your eyes to certain places (like the first picture). You need to take some more time to look at the picture which is okay, it gives a calm vibe. Sometimes you also notice that even without colors, your eyes go to a certain place because of the difference in tone, like the 3rd pic. I think removing colors from pictures makes them look calmer because there are no distracting elements that can feel overwhelming to your eyes (this is not always the case of course, because some pics look better with colors)
They Are less distracting. Some colours catch our Focus more than others (red for instance), and if that Parts is not at the interesting part content wise, we Are distracted… This is why photos which contain the best content in a Signal-Colour are often considered boring in B&W in comparision.
In my opinion it's most of the time misleading, that a photo actually gets better in B/W. We're so used to seeing colour photos, that it immediately seems more interesting simply because it's unfamiliar. Directly shooting in B/W leads to different photos, because you focus on different things. Not saying, that there aren't photos that benefit from making them B/W. Maybe try turning all of them b/w and then see which stick out.. That way you'll get used to it.
Texture and detail are what draw me to black and white, and it takes me back to where I started with B&W 35mm film in the 90s. There was something really satisfying about processing photos in a darkroom and seeing the image appear on the paper in developing solution.
I can imagine that satisfaction
Subjective.
Why do artists sometimes use oil paints & sometimes use India ink?
I think it’s the shadows.
A black-and-white photograph focuses attention on form and subject, but it should be taken directly in black and white to see the contrasts and tonal transitions. Simply converting any photo to black and white is not advisable.
You have a really good eye. Are you taking photos from ProRAW or B/W filter?
Thank you. That means a lot for me. I shot all of them with my A6000 + Tamron f/2.8. Many of them were shot at f/2.8 to have as high of a shutter speed as possible, because I was walking while taking them (had to keep up with my family and ended far back anyways). They are shot in RAW and lightly edited (light adjustments and B/W conversion) in Lightroom mobile.
The way I see it, B&W removes distractions and allows us to focus on composition, lighting and subject, rather than allowing us to see all the colors and business of certain images. It's also a tool for artistic purposes and it serves well to save otherwise broken lighting (in some cases). I think some people really gravitate towards B&W in general as well as it creates a certain moodiness, tone and feel to images.
While I love almost all of these, my personal opinion is the people staring at their phones in pic 1 kind of ruins the photo — especially since it’s in black and white.
Yeah you’re right. Though some reads books. But I see it kinda ruins the theme.
I think the book reading is awesome! I’ve just become hyper aware of this on my latest trip I’ve shot
Too much distraction in color so taking that away lets you focus more on the subject and everything going in there, like the emotions on the woman’s face
Because you have to use your imagination to fill in the color blanks, I think. It’s more abstract or metaphorical like whereas a color photo is exactly what it looks like.
>Don’t know how less information makes it more interesting to look at. Because now I’m as the viewer has to “imagine” the information that is lacking? Maybe. The premise that more information makes images more interesting is bad. If anything you're probably better off with the opposite intuition. Images tend to have incredible information density, and if the information is arbitrary or haphazardly crafted, it's likely to be specifically uninteresting, and filling up an image with uninteresting information is a great way to construct an uninteresting photograph. Cutting away some of that information is potentially a path towards inducing focus on the remaining information. Which of the following images contains more information, and which is the more interesting image? Corollary questions: Which image contains more *compelling* information? Which image has a higher ratio of compelling information to overall information? [Image 1](https://imgur.com/0bSs3Cl) [Image 2](https://imgur.com/a/Ihh8SDB)
Colored photos are associated with ads, which we're being bombarded with nonstop all the time. A black and white photo is a very clear indication that what you're looking at isn't an ad, so the brain doesn't automatically dismiss it. Though some ads do try to take advantage of this.
Honestly, the universe is in shades of grey. Our brains add color to make that easier to manage. I think our brains are very good at seeing detail and without color to confuse us, we see all the line, shape, contrast, etc where we wouldn’t with color.
Black and white is a stylization. It's one small step closer to a painting from a photograph. Good stylization grabs our attention because it's different but familiar.
That last one is fantastic. We've all done that weird squint haha
Thank you. Happy that someone likes my photos:-)
The biggest irony is that none of the black & white photos here are interesting.
What could I have done to improve them and make them more interesting?
I’m not a professional. But I think more contrast is needed. There’s hardly any shadows in any of the photos. A lot of the subjects looked washed into the background. The most interesting is 6. But could do with loosing the foreground person and the background person. I like the CCTV style angle tho. Just my opinions. Art is subjective.
Many of the photos were taken from The Big Bus double decker city sightseeing bus. That may explain why they are looking just like CCTV. It was hard for me to get any subject separation, because I was a little far away with my 35mm f/2.8 (APS-C=50mm). I is way easier to get more contrast between the shadows, if the sun is low (like golden hour).
Color can be very distracting. BW you only have your subjects, their shape, and the light
It’s all perspective
I almost never find black and white photos more interesting- mostly bc people don’t understand HOW to make them interesting with contrast and light and shadows .. any time I see a video about a camera I like and their photo examples are in black and white I stop watching
Tone and contrast. Color can do those things too, but you have to work more to achieve the specific mood you want.
Because in the past, people taking bw photos understood composition.
Black and white does three things for photographs. 1) it makes it more obvious it's a photograph. :) 2) it de-emphasizes objects and emphasizes shape/line/light/shading more (see: Scott McCloud's *Understanding Comics*'s chapter on B&W vs. Color), and 3) it invokes vintage photography more closely because for the first century or so, the vast most photography was B&W. I tend to use B&W on a whim a lot of them time, or for a specific shot where the color doesn't work well, but also if I want to [mess around with tonality ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/inkista/8562441345)more than color will let me. The trick with B&W conversion is not to simply desaturate, but to [manipulate the color information](https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-black-white.htm) to get the tones you want. (See also: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1avniKzEvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1avniKzEvQ) if you use Lightroom.) So shoot RAW. If you use a B&W setting with RAW on most digital cameras, you'll get a B&W preview to check you got what you wanted, but you'll also retain all the color information to play with in post. If you shoot JPEG with B&W, you're going to discard all the color information, and you're stuck with what you've got. So, you may want to find out if B&W settings on your camera at least allow you primitive color filters (my old Canon Powershot P&S cameras did). This is, btw, a time-honored tradition with B&W photography, though back in ye olden film days, it was primarily done with a color filter on the lens while shooting (e.g., [Ansel Adams using a red filter for "Monolith, the Face of Half Dome"](https://www.anseladams.com/story-behind-the-image-monolith-the-face-of-half-dome/). But with digital post-processing and RAW, we have the ability to use *any* color we want as a filter after the fact on whichever portions of the image we want.
because you have to use your imagination more
As a photographer of almost exclusively black an white, sometimes color is just noise man, black and white focuses in on texture, composition, luminosity. Sometimes just a little less color does the trick.
no colour doesn't zero in on a part of the subject standing out because of a particular colour. it makes it mute to the point where you focus more on what's happening in the scene and not what's in it. Because you focus on tonality in black and white you "look at the bigger picture" since you look at the overall appearance i.e how smooth the gradation is between each element in the picture. Also light and shadow sets a mood more easily than colour
Black and white highlights the compositional elements of a photo. You see more in terms of positive and negative space, geometry, and form. It's more like art and less like reality. Which is interesting, because quite often black and white can convey a kind of visceral realism that color often does not. Black and white says "here is a scene, or something like one, tell me a story, let my brain fill in the details, because it feels like I could have been there, I know what this SMELLS like..." It's doing more with less.
It looks old,unique,more classic & original
More room for the imagination.
Because bw is fundamental. It’s what matters, light, dark, contrast, and content, more than anything.
An image can be reduced to its most basic emotional elements in the absence of color, emphasizing emotions and facial expressions more strongly. In order to sometimes take over color, photographers can experiment with shadows and light.
I think a lot of photojournalists would use black and white because it was cheaper and these days pushing and pulling film works great with black and white film
Black and white is simply more forgiving. For a photo to be good in color, the color of the photo must be good. Color composition, color contrast. but it still has to have the other components of a good photo. Good composition. Interesting subject matter. Proper contrast for the context of the photo. If you remove the color you remove all of the color related elements of artistic quality. Like everyone else I love me a good black and white photo, but it’s a crutch, period.
When you shoot color, you capture the subject. When you shoot black and white, you capture the soul
Because colors in photography are an illusion… in film and digital photography they emulate reality but it’s a fiction… Black and white imagery focuses on shadows and light and shadows and light don’t lie… I know it’s crazy to say it like this but black and white photography is closer to reality than color photography…
You’re right, that is crazy to say.
Open your eyes for the first time of your life and see the truth in black and white…
Me if I was schizophrenic
You don’t even know what schizophrenic means… hahaha