How to take excellent black and white photos

Lead: Why do we take black and white photos? Because there is no color interference, the photo is completely light and shadow. It is probably this pure art of light and shadow that makes black and white photos so fascinating. Let me take a look at how to shoot excellent black-and-white photography with you.

? Black and white, both opposites and unity, are the last abstraction of color, which can be used to express philosophical things. Black represents mysterious, unknown, heavy and eternal silence; White represents justice, purity, transcendence and infinite possibilities.

Different black and white photos always cause people to feel differently. It is a kind of silent awe, a kind of extravagant hope, and a kind of waiting peace. There should be no ups and downs, no great sorrow and joy. We will look at this colorful world with black and white eyes.

From 1826, when the world's first black-and-white photograph was born, to 1928, the development of the first color film laid a solid foundation for the development of black-and-white photography for more than 100 years.

In the digital age, black-and-white photography is not only as simple as color removal of color photos, but also pays attention to the relationship between hue, contrast, light and shade, black and white, gray level, the uniformity of hierarchical transition, the transparency of pictures and the robustness of imaging. Even from this point, we can see that this painting reveals a kind of profundity. Let me talk about the center of this article from all aspects. What are we looking at when we look at black and white photos? What are the benefits of black and white photos? How do we shoot excellent black and white works by ourselves?

ⅰ comparison

Contrast is the density difference between black and white images and the brightness difference of the shooting scene.

The contrast between' harmony' and' harmony' in black and white photos is mainly reflected by the different relative brightness of black, white and gray. The brighter the white is, the darker the black is, and the higher the contrast is. Gray plays a transitional role in balancing black and white. Gao Fancha and low-contrast photos have their own unique charms, such as Japanese photographers Zhong Ping Zhuo Ma and Daido Moriyama, who are famous for their Gao Fancha.

Regarding the influence of contrast on images, I personally think that Gao Fancha's images will look tough and well-defined, especially in the fusion of light and shadow. The extreme and hysterical contrast seems to push the image to a climax, like a sculpture and a monument. The low-contrast image is more like a gentle silent film, misty and hazy, so you can understand the story in the image and feel the same with the author without speaking.

Ⅱ granule

Particles can be said to be the essence of black and white photos. Particles have an effect on the contrast and brightness of photos. Just the right particles will add a lot of color to the work, which is the manifestation of the charm of black and white photos. I think this is why everyone is imitating the texture of the so-called old photos in the later digital field!

Of course, it should be noted here that the grain texture of black and white film is different from the noise in digital photos. The mechanism and texture brought by the former play a positive role. Extreme lines make photos look more like classical paintings, while noise is the rough part of the image due to light problems, which has a negative impact on the image.

ⅲ dark angle

Dark corner, the phenomenon that the four corners of the picture darken when facing a scene with uniform brightness in photography, is called? Lose the light? Commonly known as Dark corner? . There are three main reasons for the dark angle: first, the edge brightness of wide-angle lens drops sharply with the increase of viewing angle; Second, there are many zoom telephoto lenses, and the diameters of some lenses are reduced, which leads to the incomplete passage of corner imaging light and reduces the brightness of corners; Thirdly, due to the large aberration of the corner, in order to improve the imaging quality, some special apertures at the edge of the lens deliberately block some edge light that affects the imaging quality, resulting in the loss of light at the corner.

Although dark corners are caused by various drawbacks of industrial design and light phenomena, are they really bad? We can't directly define whether it is good or bad, nor can we blindly say that it is not good to have dark corners. The key is whether it can be controlled. For example, sometimes the dark corner on the right just makes the whole photo look deep. Jean-Lu Sifu, a famous European fashion photographer, said that if there were no dark corners in his photos, he would feel that something had slipped away from the edge of the photos. Ansel adams, a master photographer, has repeatedly stressed that dark corners must be kept in photos. If not, he will add them when printing photos in the darkroom. It can be seen that the dark corner is not useless, especially in the field of black and white photography, its positive role can not be underestimated.

Iv tone

What exactly is tone? Tone is a modeling method and technical concept of black-and-white photography, which refers to any uniform density area on photos, negatives or transparent films that can distinguish bright or dark parts.

From the perspective of black-and-white photography, the main colors of tones can be divided into three categories: high-key, low-key and middle-key (gray tone). Different tones have different emotional colors, high-profile lightness and elegance, low-key solemnity and depth, and harmonious and stable middle tones. Only by combining hue with concrete images and objects can the works be endowed with vivid appeal.

First, high profile

High-profile gives people a bright, pure, relaxed and lively feeling. It is more suitable to express the image of women and children. Quiet in landscape photography, elegant and clean in commodity photography, soft, uniform, bright and smooth light is generally used in high-profile photography. Sometimes it feels ethereal, solemn, dull and sad, and sometimes it feels like light music and lyric poetry. According to the different content, the emotional color conveyed to people will be different.

Second, keep a low profile.

Low-key works sometimes make people feel firm, steady, calm and full of motivation, and sometimes make people feel dark, heavy and gloomy. The emotional color of low-key performance is stronger and deeper than that of high-key performance. With the change of the theme content of the works, they present their own different faces. In the performance of characters, it is usually used in the elderly. Older people with high prestige can also show young people with deep personalities. There are sculptures, monuments, temples and so on in ancient buildings.

Third, the gray tone (middle tone)

Gray tone has its unique power. The personality characteristics of timbre are not obvious. But the picture is rich and delicate, and often presents different emotional colors with different images, dynamics, colors and light. It pays attention to the use of light and is generally equipped with multiple light sources. It is ideal to express the natural landscape with gray tone. Gray tone is good at blurring the outline of objects, producing a soft, quiet and elegant aesthetic feeling, and also good at expressing rain, fog, clouds and smoke.

ⅴ filter

After exposure, the image of black and white film on the film shows different density of silver salt, which is different from that of color film with dye. The density of silver salt is determined by the exposure (regardless of the washing factor), so under the same brightness, the luminous flux of different wavelengths is different, which forms a color scale. This is normal black and white film imaging. Stop or strengthen the light of a certain wavelength, and the color scale will change. This is the function of the filter.

Different filters have different effects on the photos taken. If you can't remember those complicated functions and effects, you just need to remember the principle of color formation. The filter only allows light of the same color to pass through, and the complementary color completely blocks, and the blocking of the left and right complementary colors decreases in turn. For example, as shown in the following figure, the filter of a certain color has the largest light blocking on the opposite side, and the left and right are decreasing in turn:

Take the red mirror as an example, only red light passes through, but it blocks the most green light, and blue light is also blocked to a great extent. So when shooting the blue sky and white clouds, some light in the blue sky passes less, resulting in less film exposure, while the red light in the white clouds can pass through, resulting in film exposure. After this film is developed, the blue sky is transparent, white clouds have a high density of silver salt, which is just the opposite when printed on photographic paper, while the blue sky is exposed more and the sky is dark. For example, as follows.

However, if there are red objects in the scene at the same time, we should pay attention to the fact that the red mirror will not block, which will lead to more exposure on the film, and the red object will become a white object on the photographic paper, which may bring problems.

Because red will block green to the greatest extent, and the scenery of blue sky and white clouds often has a lot of green, the result is that the green part is easy to die black, so we should use red with caution, and often use yellow mirror or orange mirror instead of red mirror.

So, to sum up, although it is easy to get black-and-white images, learning to control the hue and gradation of black-and-white images needs serious research, which is the result of my own accumulation for many years.