Are you looking for exercises? Don’t miss our compilation with all the photography exercises that you can practice in black and white and in a wide variety of situations.
Black and white is “the king of colors”. It is the most natural and naked expression of life. Photographing in black and white is portraying ideas without embellishments, without colors, without additives. I confess to being a lover of color, I love photographing color and playing with it in my photographic compositions, however I have the feeling that color tempers our feelings, dilutes the strength of emotions. You see a photo in color and you enjoy, not only with the photo, not only with the content, but with the simple combination of colors.
The advantages of color are indisputable. But the effect that black and white has on the viewer’s mind is like no other. Black and white allows the creation of an intimate, closed and close space between the viewer and the photograph. Black and white transports you as a spectator to the center of photography, makes you almost the protagonist of the photo. It is paradoxical but have you noticed that the photos that lack color, those that were made in black and white, seem more real? Black and white gives you a strange sense of realism, similar to what you feel when you dream at night and, inside the dream, you think it is real.
Black and white catches you as a viewer. It tells you more. Entertain more. Take the test, you spend more time contemplating and exploring the message of black and white photos than you do looking at a color photo. You enjoy a color photo for a moment, period. With a black and white photo you spend more time, you look at it well, you admire it from head to toe, you go through all its nooks and crannies.
You lose yourself in it.
If you like it, you end up settling in it, you believe you are part of its history.
You may end up loving her.
Do you like black and white?
If you answered yes, here are a handful of articles that my team and I have been publishing here on the blog about black and white photography. In them we tell you the most effective secrets when it comes to photographing in black and white, mistakes that you should try to avoid, examples of photos that will excite your photographic appetite, and a good number of weekly challenges with which you can practice this type of photography. Photography. They add up to 108 between tips, tricks, mistakes to avoid, example photographs and weekly challenges that we propose as practical exercises.
I once wrote about a wonderful discovery called “Photoshop actions.” Here I leave you a careful selection of Photoshop actions designed to work with black and white photos. These are actions with which you can turn a dull and bland photograph into an expressive, dramatic or nostalgic black and white photo.