“Don’t worry. It’ll look great in black and white…”
Cat Lights
I don’t take any shots in black and white. And nor does anyone else, for that matter, because modern DSLR RAW files are always in colour. If you want to create black and white images, then you simply have to convert them in camera or in a software program like Lightroom.
How do I convert colour to black and white?
If you want to see the images you take immediately in black and white, then I’d shoot in RAW, switch on image review and simply set the camera profile to Monochrome (if you’re a Nikon user).
If you’re using Lightroom to edit your images, there are four possible conversion methods:
In the Basic panel, click on Black & White in the Treatment section.
In the Basic panel, click on the four rectangles in the Profile section then the B & W tab and select the profile you want.
Create a radial (or graduated) filter and set Saturation to zero, then draw a small circle outside the frame of the image. (This is used for creating selective colour shots.)
In the Basic panel, set Saturation to zero in the Presence section.
Unless you’re using selective colour, I recommend using the first method, and it has a number of advantages:
You can toggle the setting on and off by simply clicking on Color or Black & White.
You can use the Black & White Mix in the B & W panel that replaces the HSL panel.
You can easily use the filter system to select all your black and white images in one go.
For more details on all these methods, I suggest you watch Anthony Morganti’s video on the subject.
When should I convert to black and white?
Now that you know how to do it, the next question is obviously when.
There are a few wildlife photographers who shoot almost exclusively in black and white, so for them that particular question never even arises. For everyone else, there are a few questions you need to consider:
Are patterns and textures important?
Are you trying to simplify the composition?
Is the animal black and white (or grey)?
Is the light level very low?
Do you want to create a particular mood?
Patterns and textures
"Does my trunk look big in this...?"
Elephants are harder to photograph well than most animals on safari because they don’t have a face that looks human. The trunk looks very alien, so it’s impossible to take a simple portrait and expect people to go, “Wow!” or “Awww!”
If anthropomorphism is out, what’s left?
Well, the skin of elephants has the most fantastic texture, and that’s something that you can highlight with black and white. Converting to monochrome removes the ‘distraction’ of colourful elements and therefore emphasises patterns and textures. That’s ideal for elephants.
Simplicity
"Who's the bird with the long neck?"
This picture is very simple - it’s the head and neck of a flamingo - and this simplicity is one of the things that makes it work as an image.
I could’ve left it in colour (and I do have a colour version), but that would have changed the nature of the photograph. The pink colour would’ve dominated the image and ‘softened’ it, emphasising the beauty or cuteness of the flamingo.
Instead, the fact that it’s in black and white actually emphasises the ugliness of the bird. It looks like some sort of dinosaur, a throwback to the Jurassic period.
The other simplifying aspect is the black background. i love wildlife shots with black backgrounds. They can obviously be in colour as well, but they work especially well in black and white.
In this case, I was at Iguassú Falls in South America, and there were a few tall pine trees blocking out the sunlight in the background while the flamingo itself was in bright sunlight.
That gave me the perfect chance to remove the distraction of the birds and foliage in the background.
I actually printed this out on a 3mm sheet of aluminium, and it looked so good that someone bought it to put up in the bathroom at her luxury ski chalet in the French Alps - she even sent me a picture of it hanging on the wall!
Monochrome wildlife
Curly Wurly
I spend a lot of time on safari in Africa, so the animals I immediately think of as black and white are the zebra, elephant and Cape buffalo.
They all offer great opportunities for black and white photography, but the zebra is perhaps my favourite.
There’s something about the pattern of the stripes - particularly on the Grévy’s zebra - that positively seems to invite a monochrome shot.
You don’t get colour with a zebra, but then again you simply don’t need it.
Why try to focus on something that’s not even there? Why not work with what you’ve got?
The zebra’s stripes are so beautifully distinctive in themselves that they even lend themselves to abstract images. This one is still recognisable as a zebra, but the world’s your oyster. Experiment, and see what you get…!
Low light
Black Head
There have been plenty of times when I’ve been on an early morning game drive, and I’ve been a bit depressed.
Not that I wanted to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, I just wish there had been enough light to start taking pictures!
Turning your images into black and white can help overcome that problem as noise is far less visible at high ISO levels.
That means you can ‘get away with’ using higher ISOs than you would ordinarily, and that means in turn that you can take pictures when light levels are lower.
One trick you can try in order to ‘cheat’ the ISO level down is to use a stop or two of negative exposure compensation (as I did here).
If you do so, your image will obviously be darker, but that will work fine for certain subjects. In this case, it produces a more ‘threatening’ look in the image, and it also hides any noise in the background as it’s just too dark to see it…!
Moodiness
"Come on in. The water's lovely..."
This is probably the most sinister photograph I’ve ever taken.
I normally try to celebrate the more upbeat qualities of wildlife, including beauty, humour and cuteness, but this old hippo just looks plain mean!
That’s almost entirely due to the black and white treatment.
The original colour version was quite nice (what a dreadful word!), but it didn’t really do much for me. As Churchill might’ve said, it ‘had no theme’.
I decided to turn it into black and white, and that immediately brought out the danger and sense of threat.
Hippos are indeed very dangerous to man, so this was absolutely in keeping with the character of the animal.
Conclusion
When they make a mistake, photographers often jokingly say, “It’ll look great in black and white!”
But that’s not how I want you to look at black and white photography.
I want you to see it as an opportunity to look at the natural world in a different way by enhancing the possibilities inherent in patterns and textures, simplicity, monochrome animals, low light and moody portraits.
If you can do that, then reading this article won’t have been in vain…
If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.
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