Photography; Black and White

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Black and White pictures show the world in gray-scale. Taking B&W pictures can be easier and create nice results in terms of photography. So even it looks as it is old-fashioned it can still be a good choice.

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Before talking about the advantages of B&W, i want to criticise something about Black and White Photography. Especially in Turkey, most of the beginner photographers take pictures in B&W. Also a big group of photographers who are old fashioned themselves, take B&W pictures all the time. These so called documentary photographers, are stuck in rules and desire to he old times of photography. they are against to use of photoshop, DSLRs, pictures that do not include people in it. According to them, photography should reflect the living of (ordinary) people in street. They can say “empty” to a masterpiece of landscape photography. Nobody have to like something, but at least they should learn other genres of photography should be respected. They are especially against commercial photography. They claim that everything should be untouched and natural in the scene. So what is documentary photography in Turkey? “Face of a poor person or beggar in b&w” that’s it. Don’t get me wrong i’m not against documentary photography or street photography, i try these genres sometimes. But what i’m saying is most pf documentary photographers are closed to the improvements in technology and refuse to learn from good examples of this genre in the world. They do what they know. So traditional, boring and repeating. Why they choose to take pictures in B&W? Some characteristics of B&W photography makes things easier in terms of photography, that’s why.

Advantages of Taking Pictures in Black and White

• B&W pictures have an artistic and journalistic look. So viewers consider the subject of the picture more seriously.
• Over highlighted parts in the picture is not a big problem as it is in color photography. Consider a white sky in B&W and in a colored picture. Which one will look better? Probably the one in B&W. Why? Black and White films are more sensitive to the blue tones, and less sensitive to the green and red. So that’s why almost every b&w picture (a clear) sky is white.
• You can increase the contrast and make the picture more impressive, in a color picture, if you increase contrast too much some parts will be over highlighted and other very dark. But in b&w pictures, since there’s only black, white and tones of gray, dark places and over highlighted areas of picture wont be a problem.
• Because of the different sensitivity of B&W film to different colors (more sensitive to blue, less sensitive to green and red), creative images can be created using different colored filters. Filters lighten the objects in their own color, and darken the opposite. Such as; a red filter will show the red barn in a lighter tone of gray while show the blue sky and and green grasses darker. (If you have an digital camera you can change these on your PC using an editing software, like photoshop.
• If you are using a film camera it is cheaper to print and process the B&W film.

Examples;