I'm still figuring out my reasons for going with b&w, but they generally incorporate some of your points, especially the subject isolation, with some of Paul's -- mood, etc.
I find that a lot of spontaneous location shots will have a disharmonious colour palette, so b&w removes that factor entirely and improves the image no end. The more I study folks like Peter Lindbergh the more I admire good b&w, and try to emulate that style. A really handy feature of b&w is free skin processing. Portraits of most folks look quite a bit better in b&w than colour, especially if they have any skin redness or blotchiness. And for even more free retouching, simply adding the digital equivalent of a red filter helps enormously. On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 2:51 PM, Larry Colen <l...@red4est.com> wrote: > > One of the nice things about digital photography is being able to choose > after the fact whether to process a photo as color or black and white. > Technically, I suppose that was also possible with color film, not that it > was often done. > > Sometimes photos work as color, black and white, an some look great for > different reasons in both. > > Since the most effective way to promote discussion on the net is to post > something that people disagree with, I'll mention some of my thoughts on the > subject. > > For me it boils down to contrast, and whether you want to emphasize or > demphasize something. Generally, I want to deemphasize anything in a photo > that doesn't make a significant improvement, and I want to emphasize things > that do look good. Sometimes color differences will make something stand > out. If that's your subject, great, if it's a random bit in the background, > less so. Similarly often things with different colors will have similar > tonality, so converting to black and white can deemphasize them. Likewise, > by tweaking the response to different colors in the conversion you can > increase or decrease the emphasis. > > Thoughts? Expansion? Arguments? > > -- > Larry Colen l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
