Color and Black & White

One of the advantages of working in digital is that the sensor captures everything that it can capture.  While I may set up my mirrorless camera to show me a square, black and white image on the rear LCD screen, the camera records a color image across the entire sensor.  When I download that raw data (my RAW file), I have all the data to do with it as I please.  At best, my computer knows how I shot it and sometimes it will show me a square image (sometimes not, though I don’t know why).  But, for the raw files at least, it shows me all of the images in color.  I have to convert them to B&W on my own.  Which means I always see my images in color on my computer regardless of how I “saw” them out in the field.  That leads to today’s images.

Some images work only in black and white, others only in color.  Some images, however, work both in black and white and in color.  And sometimes, they work in both, but for very different reasons.  I came across a couple of examples from this recent trip and thought they would be worth sharing.  

While I was supposed to be making images in B&W during the recent Japanese Gardens trip I have to confess that it was the color of the light filtering through the morning clouds and the colored light on the wall that led me to this subject.  Realizing that the wall had a glow to it, and that the clouds occasionally thinned enough to cast a distinct shadow on the wall, I thought I might have an opportunity to make a black and white image.

So I framed my image and waited for the clouds to thin again.  As the shadows started to return, I realized I could frame another branch tip off to the left, so I swung the camera over just a bit as the sun got as bright as it was going to get.

The success of black and white images often depends on clear differences in tonality, though those differences may be subtle.  The thing about learning to make good black and white images is that, if you learn to see those tonal differences, they can also help make color images stronger as well.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that the color version of the same image has much of the same qualities as the black and white, plus the warmth of the sun.  

The next image is one where the color image has an impact that is totally lost in the B&W version.  But both versions work.

Back in the day, in addition to my monochrome viewing filter to help me see whether tones would separate on B&W film, I would use a range of filters on my camera to help in tonal separation.  The general rule was this: the color of a filter will lighten the same color, and darken its complement.  If you had faint, wispy clouds on a light blue sky - a yellow filter would darken the sky enough to show the clouds.  A red filter (one of Ansel Adam’s favorites) would make a blue sky go nearly black.  And I’d occasionally use my green filter to lighten green leaves against a dark tree trunk.  Now, if I simply switch the “negative” into B&W in Lightroom, I maintain the ability to lighten or darken an individual color.  Which I did in the image below because the subject that is so obvious in the color image is nearly invisible in the B&W version. In the old days, I would have experimented with a red filter to see what came out.

Not surprisingly, the barren tree and rocks combination that I’d made several photographs on on my previous trip was still as stark this time around.  The main tree was just barely starting to bud so the structure of the tree was still visible to give the image a sense of the drama.  

But the fact is, despite all of the qualities of the black and white image that carry over to the color image, the color image has a very different subject than the B&W image.

Did you even see the red blossom in the B&W version?  I lightened it for you to make it somewhat visible in black and white, but it still got lost in the leafy chaos.  If I titled my photographs, this bottom one would be titled, “Red Blossom”.  That title would be meaningless for the B&W image, unless you wanted your audience to play "Where's Waldo?"

The thing about black and white images (particularly on film) is that red and green often record as the same tonal value.  The blossom was lost in the first image, but other aspects of the image came out to make it a strong image.  Just for different reasons.  In the color version, it’s hard for the red blossom to not constantly grab your eye.  It is the contrast of color and of subject that gives the color image its main subject, despite everything else happening in the frame.  Soon, when that bush is in full blossom, the color may not be so grabbing; but for now, the solitary blossom makes the color image something entirely different than its B&W counterpart.

Pretty amazing, huh?