Cityscapes in black and white can give you a completely different way of looking at familiar places. Stripping away color emphasizes structure, light, and movement, and it pushes you to think about form instead of surface details. Black and white also makes you notice what’s often overlooked in a busy city frame.
Coming to you from Jason Friend Photography, this thoughtful video explores three approaches to creating black and white cityscapes. The first technique is long exposure, a method that can turn static buildings into dramatic subjects by contrasting them with the motion of clouds or water. Friend uses the Fujifilm GFX100 paired with a 10-stop ND filter to stretch exposures up to four minutes. A building like the Baltic in Newcastle becomes the fixed anchor in the frame, while the moving sky transforms into soft streaks of light and texture. It’s a simple setup, but the results are striking and remind you how little equipment it takes to achieve a completely different atmosphere in your images.
The second technique takes a less common route: infrared photography. Friend switches to a converted Fujifilm X-E2 that captures light at 720 nm. Many people associate infrared only with countryside scenes of glowing trees and stark skies, but he shows how it works in the city too. Using it for skylines brings an unfamiliar tone to buildings and foliage, even if it relies on sunlight to bring out the effect. If you don’t own a dedicated infrared body, you can experiment with filters like an R72 infrared filter. Results vary depending on your camera, but it’s a way to test the look before committing to a full conversion. Seeing infrared used against the hard lines of a cityscape instead of landscapes challenges you to rethink where these tools belong.
The last technique is shooting during blue hour but keeping it black and white. Most photographers lean on the rich color palette during this time, using the balance of fading daylight with city lights. Friend flips this expectation by treating the scene without color, forcing the contrast and light relationships to stand on their own. The familiar glow of cityscapes during blue hour becomes a study in tones and shapes instead. It’s a subtle change, but it demonstrates how often habits can dictate choices without you realizing it.
The thread that ties all three techniques together is the reminder to think differently about familiar settings. Friend doesn’t present the approaches as rigid lessons but as invitations to step outside routine. Watching him move between long exposure, infrared, and black and white blue hour encourages you to ask how often you default to familiar ideas instead of testing something unusual. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Friend.
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!”
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Shooting late at night downtown is another option for creating dramatic black and white photos of the city. Cities with their bright lights and social activity come alive at night, which presents a golden opportunity for photography. Nighttime changes city vibes from a chaotic, madhouse of people rushing everywhere for work and shopping during the day, to the more relaxed atmosphere of people casually enjoying dinner or a movie at night. Architecture can be emphasized with lines, shapes and contrast, without the distraction of weird color casts.
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