Black and White Photo Editing

Creating black and white photos can sometimes be challenging. If you combine that with street photography you need to be really creative to add a depth to photos you have taken. In times of analogue cameras it was even harder. Nowdays we have digital equipment, tones of editing softwares but still it doesn’t makes it easier.

I really love black and white photos, monochrome capture change overall mood of a photo because it removes distractions which are sometimes caused by colors. The only thing that you pay attention to is your subject and story behind it.

Contrasty black and white usually causes stronger emotional reaction. Noir (black/dark) usually represents cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity. Even if original photo does not have that mood after you give it that noir touch it will look mysterious and shady. If you combine it with pinhole effect you will get really dramatic photo.

Low contrast, faded look usually cause nostalgic feelings or compassion. Faded look is Instagram trend simply because of those emotional reactions.

High key black and white photos are as dramatic as noir/ low key. You need to overexpose large part of the photo to accentuate your subject but an emotional reaction to high key photos is usually opposite to that of noir. Photographers are using high key editing for the female or child subjects because it gives them genle, calm, almost dreamy look.

So as you can see editing black and white photos is not an as easy task as it seems. To illustrate the change of mood of a photo I posted couple different edits of few photos. Hope you will like them.

All photos are taken and edited by me.