Seeing in Black and White with Eileen Rafferty

0:00 [Music] thank you David I didn't answer that is the black and white you know the core photography question because it's just one option right we have lots of options uh but but you know I teach a lot of photo history and black and white um was the roots of Photography and in the days of film of course we had to make that choice if we wanted black and white or color and for those of us who shot a lot of black and white um we had to train our eye to walk

0:47 through the world and see the world in black and white excuse me where I think now because we capture in color in digital uh we often you know see the world in color capture in color and then turn it to black and white and just see what it looks like then perhaps you know what I'm saying in the software we turn it to black and white and go oh okay and now I'll work it but I think there's a true advantage to being able to visualize what the image is going to look like ahead of time because I'm sure you've all been there where you convert it to black and white and it doesn't look so great or you convert to black and white and you're surprised okay so uh I was a custom dark room printer for professionally for four years and so I shot only black and white pretty much for about four years straight uh and

1:34 that really really taught me to see the world in black and white okay so I think that your black and white images can be much stronger if you can predict what the scene is going to look like and what scene is going to make a good black and white photograph right we talked earlier in the last class about the importance of play and experimentation but also the importance of understanding your tools and knowing how to use them and control of our medium and so part of that control is knowing what that scene is going to look like in black and white later so that's why I decided to to put this class together because I think as color Shooters who convert later we're not as trained to do that anymore so uh we're going to talk about why would you even want to shoot black and white I'll

2:20 say shoot black and white but convert to black and white okay why would you want to make your images black and white today uh I'm going to teach you how you can see the world in tones which is what's important when it comes to black and white we're going to look at some working photographers today who specialize in black and white in many different um genres and fields in photography and are doing it extremely well and then if we have time at the end we'll see um I think we will is ways that we can mimic dark room techniques with our software okay I teach a couple entire Photoshop classes just on mimicking dark room techniques okay so why shoot black and white well there's a lot of reasons we

3:06 might choose to convert our images to black and white and I hope it's more than just because it looks cool or because it just looks good right I mean that's obviously the visuals of our images are important but I hope there's always another reason uh and one of the reasons the black and white might be a good choice is because it actually can eliminate the dominance of color right color is very alluring uh our eyes are drawn to color it can be it can be alluring or it can be distracting um so it can bring more attention to the content of the image rather than the colors that are in the image okay and I might have said it in the first lecture but I'll say it again especially since this is being Tate um the images that I show in my lectures are always some of mine there are some

3:51 contemporary photographers and there are a lot of uh uh images from photo history as well so they're not all mine is what I'm saying but here's a great example imagine this image if it were blue skies and each of the kids had on a blue shirt a yellow shirt and a red shirt right we would be really drawn to those colors and we would be really attracted to the colors and we might not be paying as much attention to their expressions on their body language and the actual story or message that the image is trying to convey I was to keep out yelling that guy just going to do it here's an image by Tino madadi who wasn't in f64 but she traveled with that crew of Weston and anel Adams and Iman Cunningham uh and

4:38 she shot a lot in Mexico with Weston uh but imagine again if this image you can imagine that her costume and the um basket or whatever she's carrying were possibly very brightly colored which could be a very Loring photograph but I think in black and white we are really drawn to her face and her expression okay and we're going to talk about how when you remove color it becomes very much about the form of the photograph including the message this is a um black and white film from back in the day and again um this is down at the Outer Banks there was a really cool storm rolling in I think if the sand was yellow and the sky were blue uh that we would be paying a

5:24 lot of attention to that color rather than the formation of these clouds and the energy in the ocean okay and the texture that's in this image as well I think can allow to come out more when the color is emitted another reason we might shoot black and white um because sometimes if we convert an entire series or project to black and white it can make the project feel a a little more homogeneous right maybe you're shooting a series or a project and you're not able to shoot in the same light all the time right maybe it's hard light and soft light and artif icial light or natural light okay but if you convert to black and white sometimes it can make the project or the series feel a little more homogeneous so you can see

6:09 these are two very different kinds of Studio lighting right the first one is front light the second one is side light um the first one is a very flat light the second one is showing a lot of texture and Contour okay but by converting to black and white I think it makes the images flow a little nicer here's a series of images um Bruce Springsteen these are not mine I wish they were I did not photograph Bruce Springstein uh but again in very different lighting situations the quality of the light the direction of the light are all very different okay but I think by converting it to black and white it makes the series flow nicely we even have different film formats happening here as well right the

6:56 square versus the more of a 645 or 67 black and white can be very dramatic right very dramatic so this was shooting my friend's wedding this is in the days of film where um when you were shooting a wedding you didn't breathe easily until you actually got the film back and hopefully it was exposed properly and the lab didn't mess it up right um so it's it can be very dramatic um especially in really dramatic lighting situations this is already a pretty dramatic lighting situation in the dark church with the light just coming through the window and I loved how the light was just falling on her face it's the nerves right before she walks down the aisle and the father is you know looking all confident like been

7:44 here done that right okay another wedding shot uh when I shot weddings way back when um I've had a couple stints of shooting weddings but this was my first stint during film uh no this is digital the last one was film but I would shoot only black and white my entire portfolio was black and white and if the client came to me and said I wanted color I'd say well I'm not your photographer then right go find someone else um because I want to shoot weddings in black and white right so this is a this is a digital shot but you know imagine if she's in white these are white curtains and these trees in the background were bright green right so your eye would go there immediately if that were in color but I hope by eliminating that color you can

8:30 more focus on the bride and the texture and the quality of the light not my photograph um but again look at the very dramatic lighting and this is a black and white that looks like it's been converted to a bit of a sepia tone and we'll talk about toning I love this image because this is someone who really understands light because when you're shooting stage photography you can't move the lights you can't move the people the only thing you can move is yourself right and this photographer got in this position to get this really perfect beautiful Rim light on the model right the rim light falling on his face and His Hands okay there's only that's a very small window where

9:16 that photographer could stand to get that light so that's a photographer who really understood qualities of light and characteristics of Light which is an entirely other lecture for next time uh also black and white is a departure from reality since we see the world in color every day right it's kind of fun to mix it up a little bit okay we're used to seeing trees in color in green against Blue Sky okay so sometimes you can just push the envelope and make the images a little more interesting by converting them to black and white shooting objects that most people would shoot in

10:07 color again a photograph that looks like it's been turned to a bit of a sepia tone okay so how do we train our eyes to see in black and white so if any of any of you have ever seen any of my composition or visual design lectures right that we spend a lot of time talking about this okay that a photograph is broken down into two parts form and content okay form are all the visible aspects of the photograph content is the meaning okay so form could be that you used a fast shutter speed that you have a shallow depth of field that there's lots of diagonal lines that the color temperature is blue

10:53 all those visual elements you can identify and then the meaning is the emotion that you evoked with it or the story that you told or the concept behind it okay and hopefully you know these if you're making good choices help communicate this so these are the four formal elements in photography okay this is what we these are our building blocks visually this is what we have to work with shape line texture and color and in the visual design lecture I talk about these four in great depth we're not going to do that today but that is actually on the B&H

11:40 YouTube from years ago if you wanted to watch that and light of course as photographers is what defines and shapes each of these okay the light itself and the quality of light we choose light is our medium I think sometimes as photographers we can forget that right painters use paint dancers use their bodies right sculptors use all different sorts of materials as Architects do but I think sometimes as a photographers we may forget that light is our actual medium that's what we're photographing that's what we're crafting so it's important to understand light okay so if we're talking about

12:26 black and white we have to eliminate the Allure of color so we're left with these right if our four formal elements are shap line texture and color and we remove color then that means sorry that these three one of these must be really strong maybe all of them okay so here's an example of an image that is very much about texture right and of course there's all sorts of ways with lighting and processing that we can enhance these formal aspects okay in this situation the

13:12 photographer looks like they added a lot of contrast to help bring out the texture okay also side light helps show texture a lot more than front light okay but again that's another lecture I believe this is Harry Callahan uh and this is a great example of using line really strong the light in the shadow is defining the line okay so not only is there this beautiful line Happening Here with this light and Shadow okay but we also have what we call an implied line an implied line is an invisible line or an imaginary line between two objects that is an implied line because we're going to look where people look in a photograph and those men are looking at those women so we're going to make that connection and the

13:58 women are looking out here so there's not only the actual physical lines but then there's the strong implied line as well okay and lines are important because our eyes follow them in a photograph and that helps the viewer's eye move through the photograph and then we have an example of shape so a silhouette is a classic example of emphasizing shape okay so this is backlight and look how the photographer did a really nice job of of separating the figure from the curtain if the figure was really you know in front of that curtain they would start to meld when we when we shoot Silhouettes we want to be able to see all of the form so by separating her from that

14:43 curtain we get to see her entire shape and by turning her head to the side or else it would just be a circle a blob okay so you all tell me what is the of line shape and texture what do you you think is the strongest formal element in this Photograph line line for sure this is imen Cunningham and these really beautiful strong sweeping diagonal lines are very Dynamic what about this one what do you think of the strong formal aspects here shape is a big one yep texture is a very big one so the photographer purposely used side side light okay and the side we can tell

15:30 because here's the the light's completely divided on the foot so the light's coming from directly over there because this whole side is in Shadow right and look how that side light is emphasizing the texture of the foot okay and that's important because this happens to be a portrait of barishnikov okay and so by seeing that texture what is that allowing us to see it's allowing us to see the strength in the foot but also the experience right we see the callous we see that it's an older foot it's not a young foot right so that helps you know it helps convey the message of of this image then becomes a metaphor for other things right strength experience you know Grace hard work perhaps by seeing the callous teal

16:17 notice also that with the silhouette the photographer allowed all three of the toes to be nicely separated so you can see them but I think Lon is also a very strong one in this because we have this really strong vertical line right down the middle of the frame strong vertical okay so this can also help convey strength this is an old Photograph by Clarence white from the early 1900s what do you think are the strong elements here of shap line and texture so I've heard a lot of people say texture definitely texture uh not only the the the raindrops on the window

17:02 but also that we can see this shiny bubble because of the way the lights Illuminating it and then the other really strong one would definitely be shape look at this really strong Circle we also have a strong Circle here because we finish shapes outside of the frame we know this is a head right so there's a strong Circle there strong Circle there all the circles on the window and then this one big rectangle of the window Edward Weston is classic pepper series what are the strong elements here shap shape's a big one right the way that soft light is sort of bathing this pepper really allows us to follow all of the shape of the actual pepper you know this one is really about all three it's

17:48 about the shape but those lines those curved lines is allowing us to follow the shape and then very much about the texture we can tell that it's shiny right and also imagine what this image would be like you might not I mean I just when the slide came up I said famous pepper series by edber Wesson but if I didn't say that you might not have known immediately that it was a pepper but if that were green or red you would immediately have that connection of what it was okay so black and white can also add a little bit of mystery and help abstract something a little more so how do we begin to see the world in black and white well first you have to understand the basics of color believe it or not okay so there's a a lot of information out there about color

18:35 theory okay but we're going to just talk about some of the basic characteristics of color because you need to understand color in order to understand how color will convert to gray scale and the main three characteristics as far as photography is concerned of color is Hue saturation and Luminosity right this is your hsl slider in Lightroom right H saturation luminosity and Luminosity is is essentially brightness so you really need to understand these because only one of these matters when it comes to Black and White and the other two are irrelevant but first let's define them Hue is just the name of the color in its pure State the name of the color on the color

19:26 wheel so red yellow green cyan magenta red green and blue right RGB or our primary cyan magenta yellow are our secondary and then purple and orange are tertiary colors okay so that's just the Hue the name of the Family itself the saturation is the intensity of the color right and I think we all know what saturation is when we yank that saturation slider okay when we bring that saturation slider way up this is going to wake you up if you were sleeping in my class right wake now I like to do this sometimes and

20:12 just so yeah saturation has a lot of energy right saturated colors are they kind of jump off of the screen or off of the page they've a lot of energy they're high energy they call attention and lowest saturation is actually gray Lack of Color okay when you take that saturation slider all the way down it becomes gray and look at the difference in the energy here versus the energy here right no one is good or bad just different okay so if we look at Red we have very saturated red middle saturated red and desaturated which is essentially

20:58 a light gray same as green very saturated down to desaturated and blue then we have brightness or Luminosity which is the value of the color or I like to say how light or dark it is the brightness of it okay so this is very dark red this should be a midtone red and this would be lightlight red now in our worlds we have all sorts of name for this or in

21:44 the paint chip world right we might call this you know rose pink or some sign of pink and then that could be brick red or you know there's all sorts of names that we have for different uh brightness of colors but essentially we can say when we're thinking about black and white and the world of brightness and photography dark red midtone red and light red or dark green mid-tone green and light green and one day maybe I'll come back and talk about the zone system and in the zone system this is what matters right that midtone not that the others don't but that's the the first place we generally

22:30 look for when we use the zone system for exposure is midtone so we really practice our eye to see this okay but we have dark green midtone green light green dark blue midtone blue light blue okay so how do we see tones in the world remember tones are related to brightness tones are levels of brightness so just like we looked at our RGB if we turn that to gray we have dark

23:18 gray or black midtone gray or the gray card or lightest gray or white these are tones okay so tones are related to brightness I'm going to say this over and over again and you're going to get sick of hearing me say this but I'm trying to like drive it into your head okay because this is what matters when we convert to black and white and a separation in tones is really important in black and white Okay so meaning when you're looking at a color scene and there's a good separation in the tones or

24:04 brightness of your colors that's going to convert into a good black and white with a nice variation in tones saturation and Hue are absolutely irrelevant when we convert to Black and White they have absolutely no bearing on what tone of gray they will become brightness is the only thing that matters if you don't believe me we'll look at some examples okay so let's look at this example now don't forget color is very

24:50 much about our perception and our emotions that are attached to it so if you when you first glance at this does one of these colors look brighter than the other yeah which colors look the brightest to you yeah probably yellow and then probably red and then probably blue right because uh certain colors have a lot of energy so we perceive them as bright also we relate the color yellow to light and sun and fire right things that emit energy and things that are generally bright okay so that's our our perception that that is brighter okay but when I made this slide for this lecture I literally am using numbers

25:36 with the eye dropper in Photoshop I guarantee you each of these are the exact same brightness you're just perceiving some as brighter than the other and I can prove it to you because when I convert them to black and white they are absolutely exactly the same okay and this is my point that Hue the name of the color is irrelevant okay whether that was yed yed we'll just make up colors too red yellow or blue okay didn't matter when we converted to black and white it didn't matter okay so let's take an example of changing the saturation of a color okay so in this example I made a fairly you

26:22 can see it a lot more on the actually the television screens okay this red is a very saturated red and this red is a very desaturated red like I said forget all the names we use like pink and all that desaturated red and saturated red but when I convert them to black and white they look exactly the same because saturation doesn't matter okay it's irrelevant when we convert to black and white okay what this does say to us is that these two squares were the same brightness but of of course the saturated one feels brighter to us it has more energy but it is absolutely not it's the exact same brightness and we're going to look at a

27:08 lot of examples throughout class so hopefully this will just start sinking into you more and more okay another example a very desaturated yellow and a very saturated yellow when we convert look exactly the same okay and as you can imagine we're going to do this with blue very saturated and very desaturated when converted look exactly the same okay but let's look what happens when we actually change the brightness of the color okay I took what looks to be like a mid-tone red and I made it much darker okay now when we convert that tone is actually a darker gray because

27:55 brightness is what matters when we convert to black and white these were two different tonal values okay so again darker red became darker gray okay darker blue and darker yellow will become darker gray okay so that was in color and in black and white okay so let's take this and look at an example of a photograph okay so this is a photograph I made of my friend Bray I love Bray as a model because she

28:41 can transform into anything in anyone that's my favorite kind of model so uh here is the image in color and here is the image in black and white Okay so in this example I bumped up the saturation you can see right the red is much more saturated the blue is much more saturated her skin got really ugly right because that's not so pleasant on skin to saturate notice how you know if you've ever pulled that saturation slider we have a lot of some of us have a lot of yellow others have a lot of red and it Jacks that up right so that's also why we work with local adjustments rather than Global adjustments right Global adjustments is when you pull the slider and the whole image changes local

29:28 is when you work with local adjustment brushes or masks in Photoshop right so in this particular example you know I think a lot of new photographers like to just yank that saturation slider up okay but you have to look everywhere and see what's happening and that's not helping her skin at all okay so anyway my point for this example is I've saturated this image but notice when I convert each of these to black and white they look exactly the same no difference whatsoever okay because saturation does not matter when you convert to black and white only the brightness matters here's an example where I desaturated the image also not so pleasing on the skin because now she looks like a vampire right which might be your

30:15 preference okay but notice when I convert to black and white there's absolutely no difference okay now here's an example where I selectively made the red sweater darker okay so you can imagine when I convert to black and white the sweater is now dark gray because the sweater was dark red I changed the brightness okay here's an example where I just made the sweater lighter and of course in the black and white the

31:01 sweater is lighter and we're going to look at some examples later of this is why it's important to understand this and I I always urge I love Lightroom and Photoshop I mean I love Photoshop so much it's crazy I love that program I mean to me that program I will never be bored in life because there is Photoshop and their Engineers are smarter than me and it just keeps getting better and Wilder and I love it okay but I want to spend my time in Photoshop making it do what I want it to do and also experimenting but I want to spend my time in Photoshop enhancing my my images not moving 10 million sliders that aren't doing what I want it to do right or Lightroom so the more you understand the fundamentals of what you

31:47 know these things that we teach you whether it's characteristics of light or you know Hue and saturation Luminosity the more you're going to move you're going to go to that image and move the right slider and not spend your time moving six wrong sliders okay so now you know and you'll see when we go in there in a little bit in Lightroom if you want to change a tone in your black and white image that you converted from color right don't mess with the this the saturation or the Hue sliders it won't make a difference but the brightness slider will and I'll show you this visually in Lightroom so don't be fooled by saturation or hue okay the the eye and the Brain plays tricks on us because we think that they're brighter so so here's an example um how many of you think that that flower is like the brightest thing

32:33 in the scene oh you're see now you're all lying of course tell the truth I did when I first looked at it right that yellow feels really bright in fact it is darker than the gray wall right the tone of the yellow is darker than the gray wall but we are fooled because the color yellow has a lot of energy to it so it feels very bright but it is not it is actually darker okay so I thought we could look at some examples of images and you know try to guess what they might look like in black and white and also just to start to get you thinking about you know what

33:19 saturation looks like versus brightness or Luminosity okay so in this image it probably feels like there's a good amount of contrast in this image and we're going to talk about contrast and break it down right but it probably feels doesn't it feel like that yellow is just jumping off that green wall right but in fact they are almost the same brightness okay so therefore they didn't convert very well into black and white as far as the yellow separating out from the green Okay the reason that they're working in the color version is because they're opposite each other on the color wheel or they don't lie next to each other so the color is what's creating this illusion also warm colors come forward and cool colors recede there's all sorts of rules of color that I've

34:06 talked about in that visual design class so it feels like the yellow is coming away from the green but in fact they're the same brightness the only really difference in tones in this image is the dark in the pictures okay here's another example you might be fooled by this bright green saturated background right but look what happens when we actually convert the image it's pretty much a midtone green it's not very bright in fact the pink flower is much brighter and the pink flower actually has a lot of nice variations and tones in the black and white why because it has a lot of

34:52 brightnesses of pink or red in the actual color image right we have very dark we have midtone we have lighter lighter very light right so that creates a really nice variation in tones in the black and white okay but notice how that green fell pretty flat because it's it's it's kind of a slightly lighter than midtone green this was a workshop we used to do in Sedona so the the Red Rock are you know really glowing and again this image feels like it has a lot of energy a lot of contrast right part of that is because of the beautiful light glowing on the Red Rocks but also it's that

35:38 orange against the blue that creates that illusion complimentary colors okay when in reality when you convert it to black and white really the only true contrast or difference in tones is in the sky the white clouds and the dark clouds against the Blue Sky okay but those orange rocks they're a little bit darker than the sky but not traumatically and I've never going to say so this doesn't make a good black and white or this does make a good black and white because I don't live in the world of yes or no or right or wrong in photography okay but it's up to you right I can tell you how we can make this a stronger black and white I think or how you could look at the scene and

36:24 say I don't think this is going to make a really strong black and white to start with because my rocks are about the same tonality or brightness of my blue sky there's not a lot of variation in tones there okay but we'll we'll work with that in some post-processing but just wanted to make that point but I'm not saying right or wrong I just want you to start to see this this was a workshop we used to do in I say used to because I just change my workshops all the time keep it exciting and fun but this was in uh Alaska really flat light all the time generally right how many people think this is going to convert well so everybody thinks it's not going

37:10 to cover it well or half of you are sleeping post lunch well let's take the reason I threw this one in there is because I think this overall blue tone can fool you right it has this blue cast to it and it might make you think that overall it's just going to feel blind because it feels like there's just all this blue okay but if you and it's true it is all blue because that's what the scene looked like and I let the color temperature stay that way because I think it really um is a true rendition of what the scene felt like there in Alaska okay but if you look closely are there a lot of variation in tones here right are there are there blacks and midtones and lights and and slightly light and

37:55 slightly dark there are right so it actually converts pretty nicely everything kind of separates out from everything the white boat separates from the black pylons the blue building is lighter than the dock and the blue building is darker than the sky right so again if you look at it in color there's a nice variation in brightnesses so don't be fooled by that overall Color cast of Blue and again we could enhance it from here but it's a really good starting point for a black wait what do you what does everybody think about this one what do you think

38:40 how many people think it's going to convert well two lone brave people a little more a few more how many people think it's not going to convert well okay so let's take a look again this this uh image has a lot of energy because of the color there's very saturated greens and then we have the nice compl colors of the orange against the Green that create a lot of energy and depth okay but what we need to look at is the Shadows the midtones the highlights okay so let's take a look actually converts better than you might think okay look where all the variation in tones is though right around the leaf right nice dark gray

39:28 really dark blacks bright whites variation in tones what sort of starts to Fall Away here is the background which in the original scene is so Dynamic that green okay but look there's not a lot of Separation in brightness between this and this so therefore there's no separation in tones in the black and white slightly I think what helps more than the tones is the texture versus not okay that's the other thing to notice which we're going to get into a little more remember I said when you remove the color it becomes about the shape line and texture I bet when you first looked at this you were really pulled in by the color Dynamic and then when we convert to black and white I bet you paid a little more attention to all the texture happening in the leaf and the table right and the lack of texture

40:16 back here okay so essentially when I keep talking about variation in tones okay variation in tones is directly connected to contrast right contrast depends on the variation in tones so let's Define contrast so everybody knows what we're talking about here okay so contrast is the difference between the brightest highlight and the darkest Shadow the difference between the brightest highlight and the darkest shadow

41:02 okay so if here's our tonal scale right we have very very dark gray or perhaps black darker gray midtone gray lighter gray down to White so if we in an image have a pixel or a tone that falls here and also falls here that's high contrast because there's a large difference between the highlight and the shadow if we have an image that doesn't have any dark blacks or light whites and maybe it just has some tones in here and here and here that would be low contrast because there's not a big difference between the highlight and the shadow okay or even if we have an image where tones fall here and here but not

41:50 here low contrast doesn't matter where it falls on the scale it's just the difference between them if the difference between them is great it's high contrast if it's not it's low contrast this is a image and Cunningham image so do you all think this is high contrast or low contrast right and again you know I think our eyes are trained to recognize contrast but I want you to really be able to break it down okay and really examine this so if we would map the tones in this image to this tonal scale we would see that there's very light Grays or almost whites and there's also pitch blacks right she actually probably shot this against a velvet backdrop because we want that backdrop to go

42:35 black with no detail so that the figure can pop out okay so that is a high contrast image because this difference is great so all of you histogram people which should be everyone in the room if you're not a histogram person you need to be a histogram person okay that's valuable information on the back of our camera Okay so what is this histogram going to look like everyone right yeah I I see a lot of people doing this yeah the histogram we don't know what the shape of the histogram is going to look like necessarily at the moment but we do know that the range of the histogram is going to take up the entire graph right and there it is complete Dark Shadows in fact clipping in our shadows

43:22 and almost very bright whites okay meaning it's spread out on the graph that's saying there's values in the highlights all along down to the shadows and when I say clipping what I mean is the histogram is actually going off the graph if you continued it it would continue off the graph okay and and this is why I say there is no black or white or yes or no in photography okay because you might hear people say you never want to clip your histogram well first of all if anybody ever says never to me I turn around I walk in the other direction from a teacher especially okay watch I'm going to say it you're going to catch me on video saying it later somewhere because you just can't say that in photography

44:08 right it depends on the circumstance okay so you might say oh no I'm clipping my histogram this is wrong it's not in this situation because like I said this was photographed so that the backdrop would lose detail that's why we use velvet because it it deadens the light the light doesn't reflect off of it okay so just to emphasize you know with the histogram it is clipping it's okay in this particular situation high contrast or low contrast right very low contrast if we would map these tones there's no true true bright bright white and there's no deep black at all okay it's mostly living right here in all the midtone range and a little bit in some of the lighter Grays okay so this is low contrast what's this histogram going to look

44:54 like it's going to be squeezed in in more to the middle okay this is telling us there's very little information in the shadows right for all of us who don't know histograms all of us that's not me for all of you who don't know histograms right I'm like trying to make you feel better um Shadows midtones highlights right okay so because all the information is squeezed into the middle and because of this high peak that's telling us okay this is just telling us that this is where all the information's lying so it's saying we have most ly midtones and lighter than midtones and we have no bright whites and we have no deep blacks okay high contrast or low contrast high contrast don't be fooled

45:40 that there aren't a lot of tones in this image right where the one of image and Cunningham had a nice variation in tones lots of different tones this one probably only has like four tones it has like a black a bright white and a couple Grays okay but that doesn't matter when it comes to contrast what matters is the difference between the darkest and the high and the lightest right and there is a great difference here in fact more than the other image because we have Pure White almost and pure black almost so that's high contrast okay so therefore the the histogram is spread out on the scale and notice most of the information is in the highlights

46:27 because there's mostly white in this image and very little midtones high contrast or low contrast right low again if we would map the tones they'd fall in a very small range on that tonal scale okay but the other thing to note about this image things that we talk about some terms we use when we talk about black and white we could say it in color too as well but we would call this a highkey image because the majority of the tones fall in the Highlight range we call that high key okay meaning most of the tones are midtone and brighter and the reason I'm telling you this is because highkey and lowkey images have very different feelings to

47:13 them right when you're evoking an emotion with your image High key tends to be light and Airy and sometimes uplifting so ask yourself if the tones are are suiting the subject matter and in this situation it is right it's a woman just you know hanging out in her tub with a light coming in this is also Clarence white from the late or the early 1900s right so it fits the scene oh I meant to ask you what the histogram is going to look like right it's all pushed to the right it's all living over here right in the highlights in the midtones and up

47:59 okay here's an example of an image okay that this this one's kind of in between it's kind of hard to say if it's high or low I would say it's a pretty high contrast because we have deep deep blacks we have almost black with no detail and the whites are pretty darn light in fact they probably are more falling down in here so you know this say somewhere in between okay but this one opposite the last one is a lowkey image because the majority of the tones are falling in the shadow range okay there's only like the curtains that are light everything else is dark and low-key images tend to feel dark and heavy and can feel

48:45 somber so again these are tools that you have to use to help convey an emotion if you want to convey an image that feels heavy or darker then you might consider a low-key image right and there's actually a caption that goes along with this that I didn't include with this Photograph that is pretty dark it says this Photograph reminds me of when we were happy so it's a sad subject right perhaps uh but so those lowkey images the lowkey tones helped convey the message with the caption so what's this histogram going to look like yep saw a couple people doing this push to the left very little information in the highlights most of it

49:32 falling midtone and below so just to be clear for people who maybe have never even known about a histogram or know what it means right I said Shadows midtones highlights so that's what it represents okay so where the histogram falls on that range is signifying the contrast right and the Peaks are a little less important to us okay when we're when we're uh evaluating exposure but what the Peaks are just telling us that that's how many pixels live in that tone right so the fact that there's a big peak right here just says that there's a lot of pixels living in the very dark dark gray realm and by this peak being lower here

50:20 that's saying there's less pixels laying in the you know sort of dark gray tones okay okay so the tones in a black and white image are dependent on the tones in the color scene tones meaning brightness I think that's my next slide okay don't be fooled by saturation or hue so the amount of tonal contrast in color will be be the amount of tonal contrast in black and white and notice I say tonal contrast not color contrast color contrast would be

51:06 complimentary colors that orange against that blue right tonal contrast brightness okay so let's let's play another exercise here of is this going to be a good black and white I don't say good how is it going to convert to black and white right how many people think this is going to have a good separation in tones and is going to be a dynamic black and white image okay how many people think Nots okay so remember we're looking at the brightness of the tones okay and in reality that orange and that blue are almost the exact same

51:52 brightness but we're fooled because our eyes get so used to color one they're complimentary opposite each other in color wheels so that they tend to separate out there's a lot of color contrast here and two orange is such a Dynamic Color it pops out at us we also have that combination of warm and cool colors like I said warm comes forward cool Falls away and if you're shooting in color and we're talking color theory these are all great things to know and great tools to use okay but in this situation the only variation in tones is really in the clouds against the sky and a little bit of Shadow here now that doesn't mean that this is a low contrast image it's actually a high contrast image because we have dark shadows and bright highlights okay but

52:39 the main the meat of the image itself is this orange Mountain against the blue sky and they're the same tonal value so they're you know almost merging together in black and white so in this situation because the mountain in the sky aren't that Dynamic but the clouds against the sky are Maybe you would choose to compose it differently right maybe you would just include a little bit of the mountain and make it more about the sky because if it's going to be black and white and you know it's going to be black and white that's going to be the more Dynamic part of the scene okay so this is what I'm saying you know this is why I put this class together because the more that we can do in the field to make our images strong and the more we can plan ahead the better it's going to be and I think

53:24 we've been doing a lot of things backwards in the world now right we're all guilty of it I know you know what I'm talking about I do it too we get lazy but you know we like make the image and then later looking at the computer we go all right how can I fix this what can I do to make this better I don't know let's do this let's try this let's do this right and that's a little bit backwards and I mean it's great that we have that tool that's exciting it's exciting that we have the processing tools to enhance our images but as I said before the other thing I will say about Photoshop is I want to spend spend my time in Photoshop enhancing an already good image rather than fixing a not so good image that's that's a a big waste of my time it's also if you want to go back to the the lecture about

54:10 creativity think about mentally psychologically what that's doing when you're spending all of your time fixing bad images versus spending all of your time making really good images even better okay we know that in creativity uh positive feedback whether it's intrinsic or external right positive feedback fuels even more creativity in the brain they have measured that when we get excited and have positive feelings it makes us more creative so if you're looking at your images in Photoshop and they're already good and you're making them better or you look at your image on the back of your camera and it already looks good that's going to fuel those creative it's going to fire those creative engines rather than looking at an image that's bad and going

54:55 I'll fix it later right okay what do you think about this image do we think this is going to convert well yeah some people said no I would love to hear a lot more feedback but since we're videotaping I can't I can't do that for every image but remember we want to look at variation in tones this looks fantastic right because we have dark tones and midtones and light tones and they're all next to each other and separating out from each other as well right we can see there's some areas like the Red Roof and the beige building are pretty close together so they're sort of the same tone but let's just go back that blue is so much lighter than the

55:41 dark red that's so much lighter than the dark dark roof and the bright whites okay so this actually is a really great starting point for a black and white it's down at the outer banks in North Carolina used to do a workshop there love that place love that place what do I think about this where's the contrast is there contrast yeah we have a lot of contrast right here okay so that's going to look great however we don't have a lot of contrast between the sand and the blue sky okay and again I'm not saying right or wrong I'm just getting you to recognize this okay I hope that by now soon you

56:26 can look at this image and go this is going to convert great and this is going to just fall a little flat so again what can I do to fix that and we'll talk about that but what I wanted to point out about this is look at the variation in tones in the sky right from midtone to dark to light that's nice so even though the Sand Dune didn't separate out from the Blue Sky the sky itself has a nice variation in tones it's not just one solid blue if you look at the original right so this is an old film image of mine that I scratched up and scanned so

57:12 it be all scratched it's pretty dynamic because of all the texture and the color but this is what it looks like in black and white not so dynamic in fact the only variation in tones is the highlights behind their dark clothing in skin okay but in reality sorry their blues and her dark skin are about all the same tones okay it's more Dynamic here because of the blue and the orange okay but what I want you to pay attention to is I think that when I convert it to black and white even though the tones don't look so great do you find that the texture jumps out a lot more M

58:03 right just a couple more examples hopefully this is starting to sink in just take a look at the variation in tones this is a high contrast image we know okay but we need to also break AP break apart the parts of the image there's parts of this image that are going to look good and parts that are not okay so if we convert I hope that you realized that the gray rock and the green grass were both midtones they were the exact same tone so now there's zero separation between that grass and that rock but the lighter waterfall stands out and look how much Dynamic tones there is in the sky right so if I go back notice there's a

58:50 lot of variation in tones here there is not in here except for the white waterfall and so therefore half of the photograph went went pretty blah how many people think this will convert well just a few again don't be fooled by the color cast right I added this this cyan Color cast to it yeah is there lots of variation in tones okay and there is this actually

59:37 converts pretty nicely but we get fooled by color right because I put this overall cyan cast to it it made you think that because it had this sort of monochromatic color it made you think that it was actually you know not a dynamic images as far as tones go but if you could remove that color cast and really look and see that there are bright highlights and Deep Shadows and her dress has highlights and shadows there's variation in tones everywhere look at the separation of the shadow of her against the the fridge there's a lot of variations in tones here I'm you know kind of beating a dead

1:00:24 horse so that you guys can see this so I'm just going to flip through this so you see but pay attention again to the tones not the colors so notice how the light swing and the light dirt stand out but that pink does not stand out against the dirt okay it's very dynamic because that pink is really standing out against all the cool tones but in black and white it's just a little bit lighter than the dirt itself but the swing looks great how many people think good hopefully by now you all know that

1:01:10 this is going to look awful right because the red fish and the cyan room are the exact same brightness the only contrast here is the light boy the dark shadow here right again I'm just going to flip through these don't be fooled by the color cast this actually converts nicely okay you might think not but again look at this midtone Shadow highlight Shadow highlight Shadow not only all these tones but the way they're butting up against each other makes it convert pretty nicely

1:01:58 okay so hopefully that's starting to sink in now you know it's really easy to evoke emotion with color because color does that right we react to color okay uh it's very Dynamic we make a lot of so associations to color right so even the sunset it's warm right it might be peaceful it might be welcoming all those things that we associate with these yellows and oranges right or the bright vibrant green and the bright striped shirt and the movement and the laughter okay the color are really adding to the playfulness of the image okay the way Blues make us feel or Cy or colol

1:02:45 tones like I'm in an igloo in this room right sorry I don't know if I usually joke all the the way through my lectures and because we're videotaping I'm not sure if I should make all my jokes but please I mean I think they're funny but you know uh so yeah think about how these different colors feel and if this particular image was red or if it were blue right how different it would feel or if it were Pure White okay so how do we evoke emotion without color well we have lots of visual tools and a lot of them broke down and talked about in the visual design class but I just wanted to point a few out here CU we have other

1:03:34 tools so for instance this image right ask yourself what emotions it evokes how it feels okay yeah it might feel desolate it might feel peaceful it might feel open it might feel lonely it's going to feel different for everyone right but I think that this image has an immediate emotional impact with no color Okay so let's look at what we think is adding to that okay and what I think is is the use of all of this negative space Okay negative space is when we have large portions of the frame that have nothing in them I love negative space it's very calming it's very minimalist okay the placement and scale

1:04:21 of the figure the fact that the figure is very very small in the scene and tucked away in this one side and Corner okay also the fact that the figure has all this space behind it we can imagine the figure just walked through this space because he's walking out of the frame right and then of course the weather the atmosphere so we have lots of we can have lots of fun with atmosphere and and quality of light right so this beautiful soft light being created by the fog Bruce Davidson I think this image immediately evokes an emotion and a response in us right it's also because of context right

1:05:08 of History we can we can guess what time period this is and we know historically what was happening in this time period right okay but the expressions are really important in this scene and again If This Were In Color you know this could be yellow and white and this could be blue and there could be color in the back right but by reducing or removing the color okay it really helps us focus on the Expressions the body language it helps tell the story right and when I say contrast I mean the contrast between the people in it right you know it's also literally dark versus light in tones and you know

1:05:54 metaphorically dark skin versus light skin at odds it's a very powerful image in in in Gray scale this is a friend of mine who made this image she did a series on women battling breast cancer and again I think by and this was a recent project in the last five years so she definitely shot it in color right but I think by converting it to black and white it really allowed the symbolic elements to come through those associations we make when we see someone with no hair and we see the wigs in front of her right I bet most of you probably guess that it might be about

1:06:42 cancer where If This Were In Color there would be color coming through the window perhaps the color of the wigs but here we can get right to the action in the story and again the contrast of her in darkness and the Light Window Beyond classic ano atoms image right beautiful and look at the variation in tones here okay so not only the variation in tones but what else we have we have a lot of contrast but we have this beautiful repetition so our eyes like repetition in a frame so we have this repetition of all the tree limbs or tree trunks right one after the other going through the frame into the frame

1:07:28 and then we even see the ones Beyond and I talk about this one in the visual design class okay because we know that anel Adams was a master dark room printer okay so he could have made this print look any look any way he wanted to meaning he could have made these Shadows completely black and had just the white trees popping out of Darkness absolutely okay but the fact that he allowed some of these trees to be coming out of the Shadows brings us into the shadows and also it emphasizes that repetition more oh there's more Beyond this they just keep going so it really brings the viewer into the scene look at out also when we want I can't really look at images without talking about composition because I've taught composition for so long but the

1:08:14 other thing that anel did well here is if he was move if he had moved an inch to the left or the right these trees would have merged together this separation between this tree and this tree is perfect they're not merging so we have the dark and the light and the dark and the light and the dark and the light he's pretty good at what he did kind of knew what he was doing also when you're exposing an 8 by10 piece of film you better take your time on that composition right this is uh sugamoto contemporary Japanese photographer U is one of my all-time favorites brilliant okay and look what he's doing here in black and white he's got symmetry right same amount of sky and

1:09:00 ocean a lot of negative space and he did this whole series he called seascapes where he photographed many many seas and he did them in really long exposure so that's why the water is so soft and that's why the line between the on the horizon is blurred okay because they're very long exposure so all the movement from the water is creating this really soft feeling and he did them all black and white if you ever get a chance to see them in person the show is pretty amazing I saw them at the heror in DC and they actually exhibited them in a circular room which was beautiful so you could just stand there and you know see them around you was really lovely sugamoto s u i m o t

1:09:50 o Super Famous he's got a studio here in chel he's got a studio I want to be this guy or at least hang out with him he's got a studio in Tokyo Paris and New York so examples of historical black and white photographs that really evoke an emotion without the need of color this is why a lot of photojournalists choose to shoot in black and white okay because the other thing is some images are so emotionally charged that we don't need the overwhelming addition of color right a

1:10:36 lot of photojournalists choose to shoot in black and white this is a famous image called burst of Joy right simply in black and white sometimes is enough because of the emotional content of the image and there's a whole history behind why so many photographers shot in black and white even when Color Film came about but again it's another class so why or when would we maybe want to use black and white we talked about this a little bit in the beginning reasons we would want to but I want to give you some other examples of when black and white can be really nice okay and Abstract photography right because abstract photography is often when we want to obscure the subject okay we want to make the subject not so evident or

1:11:23 obvious and also abstract photography is so much about the form the visual aspects sometimes we don't even know what the object is so it's kind of hard to know what the story or the meaning is it's just really about the visuals so if you can reduce it to black and white or I should say convert it to black and white it can be really strong and if you want to see a great example of this check out this guy right Aaron siskin a historical photographer no longer with us if you look him up he did a he was a documentary photographer for a long time but if you look at his just his abstract work he was really cool cuz he was hanging out with the abstract expressionists here in New York in the you know 60s with Jackson Pollock and that whole crew Jasper John's but

1:12:10 what I love about him is he was I mean literally was in their pack hanging out and he said okay what you guys is do what you guys are doing is really cool I'm going to try to do exactly what you're doing with paint with the camera and so he walked around the streets of New York and photographed you know with the idea of abstract expressionist painting in his mind and man he made a lot of really really cool photographs this is not him how you spell uh Aaron a a r o n cisin s i s k i n d okay but again if this were blue skies you might immediately identify what this is but by making it black and white maybe at first there's a little mystery and you're also hopefully paying attention to the the form a little bit

1:12:58 more this is an Aaron cisin this is my friend Athena this is her photograph I should say taking something that would immediately be recognizable if it were in color and of course in time you see what it is but maybe not immediately okay just leaving a little bit of time for the viewer to go you know we want to draw the viewer in right so if something is immediately understandable and red

1:13:45 sometimes we look at image we go oh yeah I get it okay but if you can just leave a little bit of space for the viewer to pause whether that's with the visuals or the meaning then that can be great so again shooting the unexpected shooting something that everyone else shoots in color and making it black and white right nine out of 10 photographers would have shot a bunch of flowers in a field in color okay but again now that we've turned it to black and white not only do we see the beautiful difference in brightness of these flowers but we can pay attention to the texture a little more kind of takes us into this World in a different way underwater photography everyone does it in color

1:14:32 right there's very few photographers doing in a black and white I can think of two right now I mean I don't know them all obviously but two come to mind look how much it reveals the texture in these Dolphins it's so beautiful right a huge field of tulips everybody's going to shoot it in color right but this is actually infrared which is why it sort of has that glowing look to it right which plant life does so well in infrared because it's emitting a lot of infrared Rays so I thought there was a great choice to shoot this field in infrared not my image the American flag right we we we

1:15:18 identify we know that that is red white and blue right this is Robert Frank by the way we know that that is probably red brick you know we can make those connections this is from his book The Americans Robert Frank black and white photographs can feel Timeless right I love when a photograph I love when I can't place the time period of a photograph now of course you know you Sports people will say well but that's a modern you know score clock thing back here or whatever yes of course when we look closely we can in the uniforms and the helmets but at first glance you know you don't know if this is the 50s the 80s now I kind of like that sometimes

1:16:03 with black and white this is a wedding photographer we're going to look at in a little bit um who he's Italian and he shoots almost all in black and white and I love how Timeless his images feel especially because this guy is dressed like he's from another era it's actually a contemporary photograph from the last five years so I was so excited when I made

1:16:49 this image this is with a hogga um because I I wanted it to feel Timeless it's an old ski lift at a um mountain in

…