Urban Zebra
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Somewhere in Lille – f/2.6, 1/320 sec
I find myself more and more converting urban shots to black and white. Monochrome often strengthens the shot, unless the colors are an important part of it. What do you think?
Published on February 21, 2005.
Comments
luminouslens on February 22, 2005 #1
I completely agree. That’s why I have a whole separate blog for black and white photos. That way I never have to decide whether to post in color or in b&w for the day - I just post one of each. Forcing myself to post black and white everytime that I post a color photo has been a really great way to push myself, and I have to agree with you that often b&w can make a photo more interesting… maybe because it forces your eye to look more at things like shape and form than color?
Thomas Pindelski on February 22, 2005 #2
This works well in black and white, which is well served by simple shapes and form, as here. I have pretty much given up taking black and white pictures (what’s on my site in monochrome is generally older) except in those few cases where a strong subject benefits. Then I just hit the Desaturate command in PS. I do believe B&W is a great learning discipline, forcing concentration on the essentials, but once you have that down color is infinitely more challenging.
Marc on February 22, 2005 #3
I think old buildings lend themselves to B&W well. Plus in an urban setting in general there are often many different colours that can become distracting. I never rely on a straight Desaturate though, using the Channel Mixer gives much greater versatility. Andreas, have you ever tried emphasising the Red channel when you do your conversions? May give your skies a bit more pop.
Marc on February 22, 2005 #4
These days I also use the method described here - http://www.digidaan.nl/indexframedigidaan.html?channelmixer/index.html
