The Great Power of NO Color

by Danilo Piccioni

When thinking of black and white photography, the worst thing one could think is that B&W is a photograph without any color. It would be just as bad as thinking that a color image is a B&W photograph infested with colors. There are sixteen million shades of gray in the B&W world; trust me when I say that's a lot. There is no reason to think that a B&W picture is in any way inferior to a color one.

Typically a non-digital B&W shooter would use a colored filter attached to the camera; the filter allows the photographer to see the scene in B&W through the viewfinder so that he can decide how to shoot reality at its best using a different-color filter, e.g. yellow, red, green.
Today’s mid-range digital cameras have the option of shooting directly in BW or in color.
Now you just shoot and then decide later, and if you want, you can have them both.
If you are serious about B&W photography, you want to capture your exposures in color first, then convert it into B&W later in your Photoshop darkroom.

There are many different ways to create a B&W photograph in PS from a color shot. The worst thing you could do to your photograph is to chose the one-click method, to convert the color photo to grayscale.
These sample photographs show you the difference between a photograph that was converted with this automatic PS feature and the versions achieved by working with other methods in PS.
This and other tricks and techniques will be explained in full detail in my B&W course here and only here at Perfect Picture School of Photography.

Danilo Piccioni © 2007