These past few months, I have written about all sorts of photography tricks that I use over and over. I recently realized I haven't shared when and why I use black-and-white filters. The funny thing is I didn't really know why I did it myself until I looked back at some of my photos and thought about why I made that choice. Below are examples of the top six reasons I'll slap a black-and-white filter over a photo.
I use black-and-white when I want to make a background appear less cluttered. I do this all of the time when I take photos somewhere that has a lot going on (like a store).
I also use black-and-white when the image is blurry because it's zoomed in. Sometimes the photo is awesome and special to me and a black-and-white filter can mask a low-res image and small imperfections.
I convert to black-and-white when for whatever reason a photo has a weird color cast. In the image above, my house looked really yellow and dull based on the light coming in. A quick switch to black-and-white fixed the problem.
Similarly, if a photo is too dark or has harsh indoor lighting, I'll try it in black-and-white to see if I like it better. Above is the B5 filter in VSCOcam which can be pretty moody and intense.
Sometimes a photo will have competing color. In the sample above, my dress was black and Ellerie was wearing white and navy. Converting the photo to black-and-white put the emphasis on us and not the varied colors of our clothing. We look like we match even though in real life we didn't exactly.
And last, but most important: sometimes black-and-white can add just the right amount of the drama. This photo above is probably one of my favorite photos of Ellerie ever. Her crouch! The light! It's breathtaking. The black-and-white filter really enhanced it by putting the emphasis on her shape and the glow instead of on the rest of the room.
All of these photos were taken with my iPhone. Recently I've been using the black-and-white filters in the VSCOcam app. Sometimes I find that if I first brighten the exposure, I can get a better black-and-white image (shown above). PicTapGo and Afterlight both have a great black and white filters as well.
I think sometimes people think turning photos to black-and-white is cheating because it's like you're trying to fancy up or remove the chaos from every day life. I get the idea, but I disagree. There's nothing wrong with elevating the every day. The goal here is to have fun with your photos and make sure you love the images that you're getting. That's always going to be my focus no matter what I'm doing, the number of filters I am applying or how I'm cropping. :)
