LEARN TO SEE IN BLACK AND WHITE
INTRODUCTION - BLACK AND WHITE AND ROMANTICISM
How many times did you find yourself crying in front of the TV screen watching an old movie? Or staring at old postcards at a used market thinking about those "good old days"? I know for sure it happened to me, several times. No shame about it! ;-) But why is that? The answer, actually, is quite simple: black and white. We normally associate black and white to "old", but it would be more accurate to associate it with "timeless": black and white has the extraordinary quality of removing the subject of a picture (for example) from its actual place in space and time, to make it far away yet totally familiar to the viewer. Another quality that it has as opposed to color is empathy: color describes a scene while black and white conveys the emotion the photographer felt while looking at that scene. I believe this is the main reason why black and white has been popular since the early age of photography (when it was the only option available) up to recent days, when we as viewers choose it over high-definition colorful imagery in many situations. We like the mystery behind it, the fact that we sometimes don't fully understand what's in the picture but we still fall in love with shapes and shades of gray on the paper or on the screen.
A long exposure of the Oarai coast. Removing the colors helps a lot in focusing on the lines created by the sea and the gravel beach.
As a landscape photographer I think it's really important to be able to craft a black and white image even by using modern cameras and tools, and to understand how a certain look can change the way the viewer looks at your imagery. Convey a feeling, remove all the distractions in the frame that color might make stand out and give your shots a "timeless" quality: everything starts with learning how to see in black and white.
TRAIN YOUR EYES TO SEE IN BLACK AND WHITE
When I say "craft", I mean something a little bit more complicated than just snapping a monochrome instagram filter on your color image after the fact: some images and compositions work better in black and white and some don't. Training your eyes to see in black in white is the most important step in getting great results. It might look daunting at first since our eyes are made to see in color, but with some practice it's possible to learn and get rid of all those distracting tones and just focus on the core of a scene. Here are some useful (I hope!) tips to learn how to do that, even with no camera at all!
Look for simple compositions
Black and white and simplicity go along very well as they both contribute in removing all the distracting elements in a scene and to focus and the most important elements. Of course by simple I don't mean obvious: simple compositions usually require a lot of time and effort to be found but they can be extremely rewarding. One good exercise is to go to a very famous and widely photographed location and try to find a different angle than the "postcard" one. A telephoto lens can sometimes help with simplifying a scene as you can cut-out more of the landscape and focus on small details. Frame your main subject with negative space or simple leading lines to guide the viewers' eyes towards the main focal point. Experiment with long exposure every time you have water or clouds in the frame to help smooth out all the visual noise in the compositions and reduce everything to simple lines and shapes.
The sky was very dull on this morning in Atami: this actually helped in making the composition really simple.
I tried several shots and different shutter speed before getting this round wave that create a nice line in a composition otherwise lacking interest.
Look for tonal contrast
Tonal contrast is created when light and dark tones lie alongside each other. A dark building in front of a bright sky or black tetrapods in the sea are really good examples. Those contrasting elements already stand out in color, but understanding the way your camera reads and interprets those particular colors in black and white is tremendously helpful in improving your black and white photography. Try and guess how, for example, a particular sky would be reproduced by your camera in monochrome BEFORE taking the shot with certain settings and use your camera display only to confirm your guesses. By doing this every single time before pressing the shutter will give you a lot of confidence and understanding of how light works and how to achieve the results you want with any camera. Also note that the human eye is usually more attracted by the bright (white) part of an image, so make sure to consider that when deciding on how to guide the viewer into the scene.
In this scene the contrast between the black rocks and the white sea and torii gate is the main element of the image.
A perfect example of tonal contrast: white snow and black sky.
Look for patterns and shapes
Sometimes beauty lies in the details. Literally. Among all the images I've shot over the years, some of my favorite ones were shot in absolutely boring places. You might think: "How can that be true!", and the answer is I got rid of all the landscape and just focused on details. Always look for patterns and shapes created either by the environment of by lights and shadows, tiles, leaves or trees: don't get stuck with the idea that a landscape image must show everything around you, no matter how beautiful that is. By getting close to something small and insignificant can actually open new doors to your creativity: a bunch of snow flakes can turn into a stunning abstract landscape if you get close enough.
Not the average cherry blossom shot: the flow of petals in the water creates a landscape in a puddle of water.
This is just a snapshot from my phone near my house: the symmetry in the leaves creates a really beautiful pattern.
GET IT IN CAMERA - FROM VISION TO ACTION
Now that we've trained our eyes to see in black and white let's make sure to set our camera in monochrome as well to get consistent results. Every camera manufacturer has slightly different options, but you should be able to set any modern digital camera to black and white with a few changes in the menu. I use Nikon and Fuji for my work: they both have their ups and downs (which I won't cover here) but are both perfectly capable of producing really nice monochrome images straight out of camera, making the post processing much easier. For my Nikon D810 I have installed a custom picture profile that emulates Kodak Tri-X (a film I particularly like since I was using it with medium format in the past), while my favorite profile for my Fuji X-T20 is the built-in Acros emulation with red filter (which darkens blue skies and increases contrast and sharpness in landscapes): of course any monochrome setting is fine since this is not going to be the final look of the image, but just a way to help visualizing what we're shooting in a monochromatic way. In this sense mirrorless cameras are way more helpful in allowing you to see in black and white thanks to the EVF (electronic view finder): basically once you set your camera to black and white you won't be able to see any color even when you look through the finder like you would do with a traditional DSLR. The workaround for my Nikon is to use live-view, which I would use anyway to compose the image, so, no big deal!, but definitely worth mentioning. This simple change in you camera settings is all you have to do to help yourself thinking in black and white: easy!
My b&w setting for the Nikon D810.
And my favorite color profile for the X-T20: I love Acros!
I also always shoot RAW and JPG so I can get a visual reference of how I wanted the final image to look like when I start editing on my computer: sometimes I go back to an image weeks or even months after I actually took the shot and this helps tremendously in not forgetting your initial vision.
From in-camera JPG to edited JPG: the in-camera JPG only serves as a hint to my feelings in the field.
EDIT - BRING YOU VISION TO LIFE
OK, we have learned how to see in black and white and how to get the our vision in the shot as much as possible on location. The last part of our job as landscape photographers is to finalize the image on our computer, by giving the flat RAW our interpretation. This part of the workflow is really important, as it's not possible to achieve in camera. Even in the film days photographers spent hours and hours in the darkroom trying to recreate their vision from the flat negative. The whole process became much simpler and faster with digital photography, but the reasoning behind it is exactly the same: put your vision into the content, and never try to just fix something which is not good or at least in the right direction already. Programs like Photoshop have so many options that you can basically do whatever you want to a file, but my workflow is pretty basic, and this is because I shoot my images already with an idea of the final results in mind. I do all my RAW processing and black and white conversion in Capture One as I prefer it to Lightroom (personal preference!) and export the processed files to Photoshop to add the last touches which usually are:
Increase Contrast
Dodge and burn
Vignette
Apply crop (Most of my images are squared)
Add grain (If needed)
I won't cover the whole process in this post since it can easily get quite long and boring, but what I want to point out once more is that the whole workflow is usually really quick if you shot your images with a vision and by seeing the landscape around you in black and white, even before pressing the shutter.
CONCLUSIONS
That's it! We've covered why and how learning to see in black and white is a great help in improving the quality of our images and bring our vision to life. You'll find yourself looking at a stunning and colorful sunset one day, and you'd might be thinking: "Why the hell am I shooting this is black and white!", and you might be right. :-)
My approach to that is easy: sometimes I don't want to describe a scene but a feeling, and black and white is a tool to do that, so I'd happily trash the colorful sunset for a meaningful monochromatic image. Or maybe just put the camera away and enjoy that beautiful gift nature is giving me just with my eyes.
A colorful sunset can turn into a black and white 10minutes exposure. Which picture do you prefer?