A mixture of film photography and digital. This gallery is a small representation of so much of my monotone work. Most of my black and white photography occurred as I worked for newspapers, who retain the copyright on those photos, so I don’t have many of them to share here.

Photographing in black and white effectively requires you to ‘see’ in monotone. Paying attention more to light, tone and shape compositions are often stripped down to basics. I think in some respects it was easier with film. The choice to include color or not was made when you loaded your film, and then lasted for up to 36 exposures.

Now, with digital, you can post process your images in black and white and never ‘see’ in black and white when you’re taking photos. Try it sometime. Think like you have a black and white film in your camera. How will it influence your photography?

Taking a step away from using color to add expression to your photographs, you can learn so much about light. Light and tone are foundational in black and white photography. These elements demand attention at the time you take photos and during post production. If you are converting color images to black and white you will have more success with some than with others because of differences in light and tone alone.

Check out this article which will help you make better black and white photos.