I'm making an effort to learn about black & white photography. I took a workshop recently that consisted of 3 parts; the first we discussed what interests us in black & white photography, how to see in b & w, looked at great examples of high impact images, the 2nd part was a field-trip where we were given projects and the 3rd was to look at our work and discuss things greyscale. I unfortunately missed the 3rd part but really enjoyed the first and second parts.

For a black & white image to be a "high impact" and memorable image, it needs to have great composition, the subject needs to be very clear to the viewer and the lighting really becomes more important then a color image. Some people may not agree, even I am just learning about this idea, but in our discussions we all agreed that an average color image is easier to look at than an average black & white image.

I looked at my catalog of images and sorted all the b & w images and here are a few of my favorites.

Sometimes you can save a color image that has really bad color casts by changing it to black & white. A good example is if you have a group portrait and the clothing people are wearing just doesn't work and can ruin the shot, well just turn it to grayscale and voila, problem gone!

That's it for now!

Thanks,
Patrick