The Anatomy Of Grey

Some­one recent­ly asked me what I thought was the most com­mon ​‘prob­lem’ or ​‘mis­take’ in today’s dig­i­tal black and white pho­tog­ra­phy. Per­son­al­ly, I need­ed very lit­tle time to con­sid­er this ques­tion and I answered quite hon­est­ly when I said that a lot of today’s black and white images seem to be miss­ing some of the sub­tle mid greys that I love so much. It is hard to under­stand the rea­son for this, and I cer­tain­ly don’t believe it is the lack of dark­room and film pho­tog­ra­phy because when I did teach dark­room print­ing many stu­dents would come out of the dark­room with a print that was as harsh in tones as you could achieve with the chemistry!

See­ing in black and white

We have all heard that black and white pho­tog­ra­phy is reliant on vari­a­tions of form, line and tex­ture as well as weight, bal­ance and tone. Clear­ly, with­out the pres­ence of colour, we are reliant on the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who is mak­ing a com­po­si­tion to under­stand what vari­a­tions of colour will look like in a series of greys tones. I think for many pho­tog­ra­phers, this is the first stum­bling block. We see all the world in a rich matrix of colours and to under­stand these in a series of greys is not easy at all and takes a lot of prac­tice out in the field. And out in the field is where we must begin. You can­not sim­ply switch your mind into visu­al­is­ing in black and white at the flick of a switch for a sin­gle pho­to­graph and gain an under­stand­ing of tonal rela­tion­ships. It’s a ded­i­cat­ed approach that is need­ed and if a pho­tog­ra­ph­er heads out pure­ly with the intent to make black and white images, only then will they under­stand why some images worked and oth­ers did not.

The oth­er com­mon mis­un­der­stand­ing is that if there is not much colour out there on a par­tic­u­lar day then it will sim­ply work great in mono. Wrong! Where there is light we can make pho­tographs includ­ing black and white. You would not believe how many pho­tog­ra­phers I have heard say­ing, ​“It’s over­cast and dull so it’s a good day for mono”. Nev­er lose sight of the fact that the colours in the world about us are a great ally in mak­ing sub­tle vari­a­tions in tones of grey. The oth­er approach that has caused me con­cern is pho­tog­ra­phers that are back at their com­put­ers and whilst look­ing through their day’s cam­era files and after exhaust­ing every avail­able oppor­tu­ni­ty of mak­ing a good colour pho­to­graph, they then sug­gest that it might make a good black and white! Beau­ti­ful black and white pho­tographs are not an after­thought, or for that mat­ter, a last resort. 

I urge every pho­tog­ra­ph­er to head out for a full day with the sole intent to make only black and white pho­tographs. Learn to ​‘see’ ranges of bright­ness and lumi­nance in shad­ows and look for the light as it inter­acts with your sub­ject mat­ter and its sur­faces. By this, I do not mean it has to be a bright day at all. As I said ear­li­er, when there is light we can make pho­tographs. If it helps, change the set­tings on your cam­era so that your pre­view is in mono­chrome. This may help in trans­lat­ing the colour sub­ject you see into tones of grey but don’t be fooled into think­ing that that is the best that it can be, as the free­dom we have in edit­ing cam­era files into black and white is vast indeed. 

Grey is not flat

So what do I mean by lack of sub­tle mid greys? I think we have all seen exam­ples of black and white work that has become extreme­ly pop­u­lar on social media sites and pho­tog­ra­phy forums in which a huge major­i­ty of the tones pre­sent­ed are at either end of the bright­ness range push­ing shad­ow lumi­nos­i­ty in deep, dark­est greys and pale mid-tones into bright high­lights. I am not at all say­ing that this is wrong, and in fact it works beau­ti­ful­ly for some pho­tographs, but not the major­i­ty. I think pho­tog­ra­phers should stop and con­sid­er if the sky in their image real­ly does need to be burned in or dark­ened and become almost apoc­a­lyp­tic, or does increas­ing the con­trast actu­al­ly help with the shad­ow and high­light detail of a wood­land scene. Anoth­er fea­ture that has become pop­u­lar again is auto­mat­i­cal­ly apply­ing a strong vignette to pho­tographs at the final stages of edit­ing. Once again, there is noth­ing at all wrong with this effect but, ask your­self, do the tones at the edges of your pho­to­graph ben­e­fit from being dark­ened heav­i­ly to draw atten­tion to the sub­ject mat­ter towards the cen­tre of the frame? 

As a pho­tog­ra­ph­er I want the view­er to not sim­ply look ​‘at’ the pho­to­graph, but to look ​‘through’ and ​‘into’ the pho­to­graph and I often ques­tion that harsh tones and aggres­sive vignettes can pos­si­bly shat­ter the illu­sion and one is left look­ing at an image that is two dimen­sion­al. When cre­at­ing black and white pho­tographs we must take our time and build the image grad­u­al­ly through care­ful con­sid­er­a­tions of the tones. Some of the best work I have ever seen dis­plays beau­ti­ful nuances of high­light and mid-tone that com­plete the smooth tran­si­tion from black to white. It is true to say that some images cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit from print­ing ​‘hard’ but we must first have the skills to tease out all the tones on offer, then, if we choose, we can increase con­trast at any time lat­er in the process.

Cre­at­ed by you

I will also say tread care­ful­ly with plug-ins. Once again they are incred­i­bly pop­u­lar, and if used care­ful­ly and skill­ful­ly in the right hands, they will help the pho­tog­ra­ph­er achieve the image tones they want. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I think a com­mon start­ing point in using plug-ins is to exper­i­ment with sev­er­al of the pre-sets and see which one suits the image. Don’t for­get that this is a glob­al adjust­ment to your image, which of course can be altered, but don’t let the pre-set influ­ence what you want­ed your fin­ished pho­to­graph to look like. All too often I have seen prints pre­sent­ed to me that have that cer­tain ​‘look’ about them and it is clear that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er has been fid­dling with plug-in slid­ers and over cooked the image. The fun­ny thing is that all these pho­tographs seem to have the same tonal­i­ty regard­less of the sub­ject mat­ter. I would nev­er want a view­er to look at my pho­to­graph and say, ​“Did you do that with Sil­ver Efex?”, I want them to look at the sub­ject and light rather than the pro­cess­ing tool that cre­at­ed it!

From expe­ri­ence in teach­ing black and white, the point at which things begin to go wrong is when the pho­tog­ra­ph­er sees their image for the first time with­out colour. This moment of tran­si­tion is one that can leave the pho­tog­ra­ph­er with a loss of direc­tion and some­times out­ward­ly say­ing, ​“Where do we go from here?”. After being famil­iar with all the colours of the orig­i­nal sub­ject and being able to relate to some­thing that looks ​‘real’ we are thrust into some­thing that is very dif­fer­ent visu­al­ly and, at first glance, may look life­less. The com­mon reac­tion is to get as far away from this as pos­si­ble as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, and this is where irrepara­ble dam­age can be caused and often the junc­ture where pre-sets, con­trast, and worst of all, ​‘struc­ture’ slid­ers are swept into play! After this point, at best, you will be recov­er­ing the image as opposed to refin­ing the image. As hard as it is, one must try to see the ini­tial con­ver­sion from colour to mono­chrome as the per­fect ingre­di­ent with which to tease out a won­der­ful vari­a­tion of tones, and through­out that jour­ney the pho­tog­ra­ph­er can con­sid­er­ate­ly ​‘sea­son’ the image with what­ev­er is need­ed to intro­duce three-dimensionality. 

Learn to love editing

I per­son­al­ly find the edit­ing process (or print­ing) as equal­ly enjoy­able as being out in the land­scape with my cam­era. More­over, if a pho­tog­ra­ph­er embraces image edit­ing as opposed to declar­ing a hate for their time in front of the com­put­er screen, then this in turn will inform what you do out in the field and can instill con­fi­dence. If you are per­fect­ly aware of the capa­bil­i­ty of what you can re-cre­ate back at home whilst edit­ing, then you will be con­fi­dent when see­ing the pre­views on the back of your cam­era. With­out doubt it takes time and prac­tice, but I would rec­om­mend that you make few­er expo­sures, and by doing so, when you are edit­ing and you achieve suc­cess you will be more like­ly to recall why you made the expo­sure in the first place and what you intend­ed it to look like. Fur­ther­more, if an image has been deemed a fail­ure, you will remem­ber where you went wrong. This is the begin­ning of the visu­al­i­sa­tion process!

When we print a pho­to­graph onto paper it is con­fined to the four edges of the image. The human eye can under­stand what is light and what is dark and the view­er will under­stand what should be a shad­ow and what should be a high­light with­in that space. What we have to decide is how to rep­re­sent these tones with­in the four edges of the image and how they will con­vey the infor­ma­tion. At this point we can choose whether to print hard with con­trast, and in doing so allow the pho­to­graph to shout out its mes­sage. Or con­verse­ly, we can do the oppo­site with rich mid-tones and soft high­lights and make things qui­eter. Per­son­al­ly, I like to whis­per from time to time but I also feel free to raise my voice when it’s needed.

Peo­ple will be aware of the pres­ence of some­one that is speak­ing loud­ly, but will lis­ten intent­ly to what is being said by some­one soft­ly spo­ken. I feel sub­tle­ty is intrigu­ing, con­trast is commonplace.