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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Education Field Instructional

Creating a Black and White Image That Doesn’t Feel Lazy

Chris Gampat
No Comments
01/29/2016
4 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Less Lazy Black and White of Bec (1 of 1)ISO 4001-50 sec
Model: Bec Fordyce

Creating a black and white image that isn’t lazy requires you to do a lot more to it than just hit the “convert to black and white” option when editing an image and it even requires more than just applying a filter. Conversions are one of the more looked down on ways to edit because photographers believe it to be cheap and easy–yet clients love it!

So how do you create one that doesn’t feel cheap, lazy, and that genuinely looks good? One way includes creating an image that looks good in color and black and white.

The Image Edits

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Less Lazy Black and White of Bec in color (1 of 1)ISO 4001-50 sec

Before I sit here and eat my words, the lead image of this story looks like the above photo when rendered in color. Depending on your taste, you’ll like one or the other. I like both–but ever since I founded La Noir Image I’ve been on more of a black and white spree.

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Less Lazy Black and White of Bec in color with grain (1 of 1)ISO 4001-50 sec

Now here’s that image with lots of grain added to it to further embrace the look of black and white. Not bad, huh? It looks kind of film-like because of the grain but we also understand that it’s a high contrast black and white. In fact, the look was inspired by my favorite black and white film: Ilford Delta 400.. I’ve shot with it for a while, so I know how to get it to look the way that I want. If I wanted the look of HP5, then there would be much less contrast. Kodak Tri-X would be less contrast with deeper blacks.

So how did I go about creating this?

Editing the Images

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 12.40.49 PM

The image was shot with the Canon 6D, Rokinon 135mm f2 and lit with a single Phottix Mitros + fired off camera with a Phottix Odin. Now that that’s out of the way…

When I looked at the image I figured out that trying to get any sort of detail under the hat would be tough to do because of the fact that the shadow adjustments would probably interfere with other parts of the image that I didn’t want it to. Additionally, trying to just selectively brighten that area would fight too hard against the rest of the edits that I wanted to do. So instead, I chose to embrace the mysterious look of the photo.

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 12.41.02 PM

To start it all off, I went ahead and used the camera profile from Canon and added in the Portrait rendering. This made things a bit more saturated and darker overall. At this point I willingly chose to convert it to a black and white.

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 12.41.35 PM

After the conversion I identified the problematic areas:

  • Her skin is too dark
  • The shadows need to be deeper
  • The area to the top left is too dark
  • The whites can be brighter

This is where you start the process of not just creating the lazy black and white. Instead, you’re putting work into it to make it look how you’d ideally like it to be. For that to happen, you need to have a look in mind–and one of the best ways to develop that is to work with film and learn how it renders light and shadow.

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 12.41.50 PM

The basic adjustments were done first in this case vs working with color channels. When working with black and whites, you do the basics first and use the color channels to fine tune the work. Now we’ve got deeper shadows, we can see more of her skin, etc.

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 12.42.52 PM

At this point, I chose to try to clear up the area on the top left. This was done with the adjustment brush by painting over the area and raising the exposure to even it out with the rest of the scene. It worked out pretty well.

Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 12.43.38 PM

Now came the fine tuning. Consider the following: when editing the color levels in a black and white photo, those colors will still be associated with their according areas.

To that end, choosing to tweak the orange and the rest adjusted Bec’s skin more. Again, this goes to making the image be exactly what I want it to be and therefore avoid the typical black and white look.

Now keep this in mind: not all black and white images are pure black and whites. This post explains that further.

After all this, it was only a matter of cropping the image to being the way that I liked it. I chose to add the grain in later to embrace the look even further. This wasn’t necessarily a lot of work, but then again I know what I’m doing and work with film often. However, this is how you can go ahead and start working with black and white images to create an image you’re truly proud of.

Another way to do this is to use Tonality–which also lets you make the tweaks that you want and probably does it in a way that you may find simpler.

black and white delta ilford lightroom tonality tri-x
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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