 Posted 2/1/2008 8:20:05 PM
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| I came a cross a discussion where someone asked what required higher photographic skills, black and white or colour photography? I do not intend to put this under a debate, but in my mind came the thought of whether when scoring a b&w photograph we should or not do it under the same terms of colour photographs. In any case, I believe the skills required are different; why? Because in b&w photography there is a handicap that has to be compensated: colour. In the discussion it was mentioned that when selecting the proper white balance in the digital camera, colour is the easiest thing to capture; it is there, it belongs to us. It was mentioned that a flower can be pleasing to the eye simply because it is colourful (genetical reasons maybe); and it was asked to imagine if the easiest element was taken away! The emphasis would lie on light and shadows basically and that it demanded more skills on other photographic elements to make a b&w picture compete against a colour picture. So my question, which of course I understand there can be no rules to since it has a strong subjective weight, is if we should stand on a different analytical angle when scoring a b&w image, and not just commenting lightly because we find no colour in it... Maybe someone with much more knowledge and experience could state better elements to this point. Regards to all.
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Posted 2/1/2008 9:10:18 PM
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I have read a photographic book (wish I could remember the name!) where the author states that true B&W photographers learn to see in shades of gray before they take the shot, I've tried it, it must be one of the hardest things to do! One thing I have noticed about a few (minority) B&W images is where you can clearly see the image was converted to B&W after the fact to try to hide obvious flaws like blown out highlights. Not that I'm all that innocent there - I have a book here (I highly recommend this to both beginners and intermediate photographers - Digital Photography by Michael Wright) the author actually shows how to salvage an average image with small flaws and turn it into a wow image by converting to black and white - step by step.
JACKY'S PROFILE MY TOP 24 IMAGES 
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Posted 2/2/2008 6:01:04 AM
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| Both of them have their challenges. With color images, one has to ensure the color is accurate. Far too many images have a color cast or the white balance is off. The amount of saturation also plays a key factor as well. I'm a real stickler when it comes to accurate color. The challenges with B&W images is contrast. A lot of B&W images suffer from a lack of contrast. B&W images also fall flat because there's no seperation between what was color. In other words, what was green is the same shade of gray as what was red. I never shoot in B&W, always shoot color and convert to B&W. I make sure that I tweak every color channel to ensure it doesn't come out looking gray and flat. This is my own rule of thumb when voting on B&W. I vote on the image as presented and in the category in which it was presented. In other words, if I see a B&W image in the B&W category I vote on it as a B&W. Seems pretty simple but all too often I've had people tell me that they deducted points because they thought it should have been in color. That urks me.
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