Black and white photography forces you to see light, texture, and form in ways that color photography doesn’t. Stripping away color makes you focus on contrast and composition, helping you create images with depth and mood. If you’ve never spent a day shooting only in black and white, it’s a great way to train your eye.
Coming to you from Ian Worth, this informative video explores techniques to enhance your black and white photography. One key tip is setting your camera’s picture profile to monochrome. This helps you visualize how colors translate to shades of gray, making it easier to compose intentionally. Worth stumbles upon a dramatic cove with rock formations that make for striking compositions. He discusses how light interacts with these textures, emphasizing how contrast and rim light define shapes in monochrome images.
Worth also explains the impact of using filters, both in-camera and in post-processing. A red filter, for example, darkens skies and boosts contrast, while a yellow filter offers a subtler effect. These tools allow you to control tonal balance, helping separate similar-looking elements that might blend together when converted to black and white. He demonstrates this by adjusting filters to manipulate the sky and foreground contrast, making compositions more dynamic.
Texture plays a major role in black and white photography, and Worth finds a beach with strong sand patterns that lead the eye into the frame. Using a long exposure, he softens the water to create a contrast between the smooth ocean and the detailed foreground. He also captures waves rolling through a rocky outcrop, highlighting how movement and stillness can work together in a single frame. Shooting handheld allows him to react quickly to shifting conditions, a crucial skill when working with unpredictable elements like water. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Worth.
And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out our latest tutorial, "Photographing the World: Japan II - Discovering Hidden Gems with Elia Locardi!”
