Black and White Photography the Easy Way
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
- Confucius
Turn your camera to monochrome and use the power of seeing in black and white to take better monochrome photographs.
This is why I love Electronic View Finder Cameras. It was a revelation the first time I ever did this. It changed my life, well, my photography, which is my life.
No longer did I have to exert so much energy imagining the colour conversions. I could simply see them. More energy for creative composition.
If you have a DSLR, plonk it on a tripod and use the monochrome mode in live view.
I am horrified to keep reading photographers tell people this colour photograph won’t make a good monochrome or that it will. Best practice is to conceive and shoot in monochrome from the start. Deciding later is a cop out and leads to less powerful work.
The more you practice, the more monochrome’s you create, the easier it gets. Simple.
Why do so many photographers, and photography educators delight in making photography hard? Is it to prove thier intelligence? Is it to asercert thier mastery over the medium? Is it to shut the rest of us out of an elitist activity? Is it their own pure joy in their convoluted methods?
Keep it simple and fun... Photography is special because it is so accessible to everyone. If something works, use it, enjoy it. Simplicity is a thing of beauty. This applies to methods, equipment, thought and composition.
Mist. Between Cooma and Bega. Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2019
