When modern-day photography was invented in 1839, the only option available was black & white. It wasn’t until Kodachrome came around in 1935 that color photography became more widely available and started gaining popularity.
Black & white portraits are absolutely classic. Many times, you can have a standard beautiful image but when you make it black & white… it comes to LIFE!
I don’t know who said it, but it helped me find my personal style. About a year ago, I was lost and felt disconnected from my own work. Everybody told me that nothing was wrong, that my images were beautiful.
There is just something special about black & white imagery. Perhaps it’s the way we look back at the photographs of the masters like Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh and Ansel Adams to name a few, or perhaps it’s the way old movies have a specific feel to them as we watch them in monochrome.
Black & white photography has been around since the inception of photography, when the masters brought scenes of the west to life and changed the history of art forever.
Until recently, I rarely ever photographed in black & white, but this past year I decided to add a new genre of women’s intimate portraits to my session offerings.
It’s no secret that the key to good photography is balancing the seemingly endless array of options, styles, techniques, settings and so on.
In today's world, most of our images are captured digitally and remain digital. This is the modern way and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
As the saying goes, “There are many ways to do something in Photoshop.” This is accurate for most things, except when it comes to turning a color image to black & white.
Contrast and all the shades of gray is what makes photographs dynamic. Muddy and muted pictures don't do it for me.