6 Tips for Shooting Black and White Photography

Whether you're a professional photographer shooting on a top-of-the-line Canon, Sony, or Nikon DSLR, or a hobbyist snapping away on a smartphone, it’s essential to learn how to identify and frame great portraits and scenes. Whether you’re shooting black and white portrait photography or black and white landscape photography, remember the following:

1. 1. Look for images that provide high contrast. Think of a portrait set against a shaded background or dark hills against a bright sky. Such subject matter offers a notable contrast between light and dark, and those contrasts will shine through in a stunning black and white photograph.
2. 2. Use texture as another way to express contrast. The craggy bark of a tree trunk offers textural complexity and visual patterns of shadow and light. Shadows and reflections can be particularly striking in black and white photography, so juxtaposing rough textures and angular shapes with reflective water or windows can create an eye-catching contrast.
3. 3. Monitor light sources in street photography. The key to street photography is mindfulness of the various sources of light—headlights, street lamps, neon signs, and of course the sun—that can bleed into your final image. Use these light sources to capture a spectrum of different shades of gray.
4. 4. Use a small aperture and as low an ISO as possible. Black and white portrait photography should feature sharp, consistent focus and minimal digital noise. A small aperture and a low ISO will help achieve those goals. You may have to mix and match your settings with different lenses. A wide-angle lens will not respond to the same camera settings as a telephoto lens with a shallow depth of field.
5. 5. Use the rule of thirds. Whether you’re shooting black and white or color images, use the rule of thirds to steer your viewer's eye to the important elements of the photo. The rule of thirds creates a grid of three horizontal lines and three vertical lines, visible through your viewfinder or your camera’s LCD screen. The points where the lines meet are the points of interest, so place the subject on one of those points, off-center toward either the left third or right third of the frame.
6. 6. Check your camera’s histograms. After you take the shot, your digital camera can display a histogram, which is a graphical representation of the tonal value of your shot. The histogram of a well-composed photograph will indicate that the majority of pixels are away from the shot’s most extreme blacks and extreme whites. If your shot mostly contains extremes, you will need to adjust your exposure to preserve detail in your final black and white image.

Both DSLRs and the native cameras in smartphones offer grayscale monochrome filters. You can find these tools in the settings menu along with other photo effects like sepia. It is also possible to shoot the original photo in color, then apply a black and white filter in post-production. Digital photography processing has improved to the point where it's nearly impossible for the naked eye to tell whether an image was filtered in post or shot on a classic SLR camera using black and white film.

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