Flat Light has Lots to OfferДЄnd the exact opposite is true as well! Flat light, or light which has no giant range of exposure, can make for dramatic B&W images. Looking under the boulder, you can see the heavy shadow, telling you itвЂ™s a contrasty condition. In this example, because of the large boulder, the bald skies of Alabama Hills go very dark, thus making the boulder visibly pop.

In the days of film, we often would attach a red filter when shooting black and white, just to increase the contrast. In color photography, big contrast is often discouraged. Traditionally, black and white photography has been a contrasty medium. Learn them, explore them, and exploit them, and you can vastly improve your B&W photography! Contrast is Your Friend! The public has certain preconceived visual concepts because of them. Mystery, death, love, hate, jealousy-they said them all with light! You can watch and learn a lot about B&W photography from these old movies. IвЂ™m a huge fan of B&W movies from the 40s and 50s! I watch the plot, but even more so, I watch the lighting! They couldnвЂ™t use color to pull our attention around they had to light to do that, using shades to tell their story. Perhaps this will give you some ideas to advance your black and white photography.Д®ditor's Note: This is a guest blogpost by Moose Peterson And yet, for some, itвЂ™s just as complicated and difficult as ever. That romance continues to this day, with black and white easier and simpler to do than ever.

But since the beginning of photography, black and white has been a very romantic medium. But for some of us, B&W is how we started off in photography, and how we saw our images in print. That was long before most of us got involved with it. Black and white was once the only means we had to communicate, photographically.

Black and white photo