Learning to think in Black and White

[Sangetsu]

Black and white is simply light and shadow. When "thinking" in black and white, you are just looking for contrast.

I got interested in black and white as my D300 has a "monochrome" setting. I took shots of various things in monochrome, and got a little taste of what I thought looked good and bad. Now I shoot on black and white film (my D300 simply can't produce as good a black and white image as a film camera does), and I'm enjoying it very much.

As I write, I've got freshly mixed chemicals cooling down (the weather is hot here), 3 rolls of film are hanging up to dry in the shower, while 3 more are sitting in the kitchen waiting their turn. My scanner is running through the shots I took this morning, and I'm loading my cameras with more film for the the night time festival this weekend.

 

[somtim]

Accidents and luck are good friends of mine. The more i work and practice, the more I seem to have. Pre visualize, compose, capture the light, and expose it correctly and all things are possible. Happy accidents and all!

And no what I am saying is people all learn and see things differently therefore the important thing becomes learning to capture and expose the values of what they see correctly and figuring out exactly what to do with them and how they can create a worthwhile image. Tonal values are a piece of the equation that if done correctly will give a nice looking B&W image but not necessarily a good B&W image. Subject matter, composition, focus, and a million other things have to be right for that to happen. If someone is going out specifically hunting B&W images? Great! Go get some. If not? Go get some anyway because you don't need to change the film to do it, just keep shooting. Folks who spent time in a darkroom spent much more time thinking about a single image then we digital heads ever dreamed of. The digital heads have the advantage of shooting way more images than the film folks dreamed possible which can be a big learning tool if one actually pays attention to what they are slamming the shutter on. I do hope that explained myself OK for you Rob. My way of thinking and communicating is far from black and white.