Black & White Landscape Photography

Black & White Landscape Photography

by William Lulow

Well, I guess there are always folks who like to take shortcuts, and they will always be out there. When it comes to landscape photography, however, sometimes shortcuts don’t work as well as we might like them to. Here’s an example. In addition to all my portrait work and the fashion work I used to do quite regularly, I have always taken my cameras pretty much whenever and wherever I went. You just can’t be sure when you will see something memorable that you would like to photograph. As I have said before, it is always nice not to have to pack a heavy DSLR everywhere you go. It’s a lot easier just to whip out your smartphone and record what you want. That’s the point though. You will just be recording it, not really making a really great photograph.

It’s true that you can do a lot with an image in post production and you can even add digital filters to your shots as well as convert them to monochrome. But I have found, over the last ten years or so, that those “short cuts” aren’t good substitutes for what I like to call “shooting in original Black & White.” Yes you can convert any image to monochrome, but when you think about it first, then make a conscious effort to make the image a true black & white one, you are bound to come up with some truly astonishing images, not just good ones. Here’s one I did a few years ago:

I don’t know how astonishing this one is, but it was an image I “saw” in original Black & White. Some pictures almost cry out to be shot this way. It was then a fairly simple task to make it come out just as I saw it. The puffy white clouds against a very dark background. The trees rendered dark and the grave stones highlighted against the grass. When I brought the image up in Photoshop for some post production, I wanted to darken the sky even more and lighten the trees a bit. This was shot with my Canon 90D (32MP sensor) with a red #25A filter over the lens. I use a Cokin P-Series filter set up, which consists of a filter holder that is screwed into the lens mount and a series of 4″ filters. I usually use a series of NEUTRAL DENSITY GRADIENT FILTERS, a #25A, red filter, a CROSS-HATCH FILTER for nighttime shooting, and a series of regular, solid neutral density filters, in various shades, that I can use in combination for long exposures.  You sometimes cannot get the same saturation with a digital filter after the fact if you convert a color image to monochrome. 

I am always in favor of shooting a scene the way you see it in your mind’s eye. Yes , all kinds of modifications can be made later, as we all know by now, but this was an especially pleasing image to make because it came out EXACTLY the way I envisioned it. I almost didn’t have to edit it at all.

I think there is no substitution for how you conceive an image from the beginning. There is always room for creative modification, maybe something you didn’t see initially, comes out when you begin working with a photograph, but it’s always more satisfying if you have and idea about something you want to say and then bring that notion to fruition when you create the image.

On this same trip, I came across a series of Avedon prints in the window of an empty store:

This was one of those times when I just wanted to record what was there, but with a kind of heightened awareness of the reflection to indicate that it was a storefront. I decided to enhance the separate images a bit by increasing their contrast in post production. But I was kind of channeling my inner Lee Friedlander (well known photographer who often made images in mirrors as well as reflections elsewhere and various street scenes). So, this image, reflections and all with a puffy cloud background, is just an exercise. Also, Avedon’s images are quite well-known as well, so seeing them as part of a reflected picture is kind of a unique thing on its own.

This image is another throwback to street-scene photographs, many of which I did back in the 1950s when I was beginning to experiment with Black&White photos taken with my old Nikon F’s. In those days, processing color film was expensive, sometimes around $5.00 per roll (plus the cost of the film itself), if you shot transparency film. So, for these kinds of shots, I just shot B&W and developed the film myself. Since I was thinking to use this shot in an article about B&W shooting, I decided to retouch out some wires and a telephone pole to make it cleaner. See if you can tell where they were. I also increased the contrast a bit from the original because it was the overall scene I was after rather than the smaller details. I did want to retain the contrast in the sky, however.

The concept in photography that probably isn’t spoken of enough is that the absence of color makes tones and shapes in an image much more noticeable. Black & White images make the photographer think more about composition and tonal values. Here is another one of my original B&W landscapes:

This one was made at almost the same spot in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming where Ansel Adams stood for his famous 1942 version of the Snake River and Grand Teton. It’s not quite the same however because many trees have grown up since his photograph was made and of course, the lighting and manipulation is completely different.

Color, when it was introduced to photography in the late 1930s, dazzled us, the viewing public. Obviously, human beings see color, but when we try to photograph something in front of the camera and make a really good composition of it, the rules are much more apparent in tones of black, white and gray. Because it is more reminiscent of how early photographs were done, Black&White has developed a kind of “classical” look to it. For the student of photography this can be an invaluable tool because it forces an awareness of the elements that make images compelling.

I have even made some images that combined color with Black&White to see what impact it would have:

Here you can see that the absence of color actually HIGHLIGHTS the color and makes it really stand out in the image. This is a fairly easy technique to learn and can sometimes be used for dramatic impact. But, Black&White is the way to learn about composition and how it effects images.