Art means approach and technique. This is my personal take on black and white photography:
Abstract is better
To me, monochrome is most interesting when we are not quite sure what we are looking at. This means:
- Shoot uber-high contrast monochrome black and white to intentionally *obscure* much of what is happening in your photo and frame. The Italian painterly notion of ‘chiaroscuro‘ literally means clear+obscure. Make what you are shooting clear by making sure there is strong contrast, an outline of your subject, separation, figure-to-ground, or perhaps a silhouette.
- When you’re shooting, deliberately under-expose your photos (-1 or -2) to darken much of the photograph, to make it more mysterious.
- With post-processing, ‘crush the blacks‘ — increase the ‘blacks’ slide in post processing in Lightroom or Apple Photos, and increase the contrast to the maximum.
- To make your photos more surreal, shoot reflections, abstract shapes and forms on the ground, gritty textures, or when the light is unusual.
