The Art of Black & White Photography: When and How to Use It

There’s no question that black & white photography is beautiful.

After all, many art photographers only ever shoot in black and white, and there are whole magazines solely dedicated to monochrome photography.

However, creating a beautiful greyscale image is not as straightforward as it seems.

In today’s article, I share the three common mistakes to avoid in black and white photography so you can make your images monochrome in the most optimum way.

Mistake #1: You Convert Photos to Black and White at Random

If there’s one thing you take away from this article, let it be this:

Artistic choices should always be made with intention.

I used to have a great photography teacher who would always make us reflect on our choices:

Why did we crop the image that way?

Why did we edit out that detail?

Why did we make the image black and white?

She tried to teach us that any choice is a good choice, as long as we made it with intention.

Be Intentional About Converting Photos to Black and White

Thus, when it comes to making your photography art black and white, don’t just do it haphazardly because you think it looks cool, or because so many fine art photographers shoot only in black and white.

Instead, take a moment and think about what effect you’re trying to achieve with your picture or what message you want to convey.

If you’re not sure, here are five reasons why you may want to convert your image to black and white:

1) You Want to Remove Distracting Details

Colour pictures are beautiful, but they are also very “noisy” compared to greyscale images.

For example, if you’re a wildlife photographer and you take a photo of a swan in a park, you may not be able to avoid capturing some distracting details such as signs or bins in the background.

See the photo below; the red detail is quite noticeable, and it may be worth converting this image to black and white to put the focus on the swan:

In another context, when perhaps you take a photo of a nocturnal street scene with a lot of neon lighting, you may want to highlight those exact details because they contribute to the lively atmosphere of the image, making colour essential:

To sum up, black and white art photography is often favoured when you’re not able to crop or edit out distracting details, but want to make them less obvious, thus guiding the viewer’s gaze to where you want it.

2) You Want to Highlight Certain Details, Patterns or Textures

When you take the colour out of a photograph, it will be “read” differently:

Usually, the eye is first drawn to colours, particularly bright colours such as red, blue or yellow.

In the absence of colours, the viewer will take in a lot of other information, for example patterns, structures, textures or other details.

You can use this to your advantage and make images black and white to highlight such elements.

A great example are shadows: in colour photography, they may not be as noticeable, but if you convert an image to greyscale, you really emphasise them, see below example:

So, if you photograph a beach, for example, the ripples in the sand will really pop in a black and white image, much more than in colour.

If you find that the effect isn’t as pronounced as you would like in your respective photo, increase the contrast/adjust the shadows and highlights (more about this later in the article).

3) You Want to Convey a Certain Mood

Another great reason why you may want to make your photo greyscale is to convey a mood or emotion.

For example, look at this photo I took on a foggy beach:

It was taken as a RAW image in colour, but I converted it to black and white in order to evoke a feeling of loneliness and longing, underscored by the fog and the sole figure.

So, next time you’re not sure whether you should turn an image black and white, ask yourself:

If you took the colours away, would the “mood” of the photo change?

Would it gain an emotional dimension that the colour version lacked?

In essence, would you be able to tell a different story with your black and white image?

Again, this goes back to your creative decision being intentional.

Look at this photo here:

It was originally in colour, but I decided to make it black and white because I wanted the girl’s sadness to be the focus of the image – a feeling generally associated with black and white (think Schindler’s list).

If converting your image to monochrome doesn’t add anything to the story or doesn’t change the interpretation of the image, maybe it isn’t necessary in that case.

4) You Want to Make the Mundane More Beautiful

For humans, seeing in colour is the default mode; we are used to seeing everything in different colours.

As a result, a photo in black and white will never show things as they appear in our reality; it is an unnatural, “artificial” way to depict something.

This is not a negative, though – you can actually use it to great effect if you want to make every day, mundane things appear more beautiful or give them a different meaning.

Make Ordinary Items Appear Unordinary

A fantastic example are the black and white photographs of peppers by Edward Weston:

They show an ordinary vegetable in an unordinary way, highlighting its beautiful curves and shapes.

So, if you’re unsure whether to convert a photo to black and white, this may be one of the reasons why it’s worth doing.

5) You Want to Become a Better Photographer

If you’ve made photos greyscale before, you may have noticed that sometimes images look quite dull and lifeless once you take the colour away.

This happens particularly when we want to try and save a bad photo by turning it monochrome, but unfortunately this doesn’t really work (see mistake #3 below).

Since a black and white image lacks all the colour information, it has to wow the viewer in another way.

As discussed, this could be by depicting specific textures or patterns, striking light and dark contrasts or a beautiful composition.

With every photo you convert to black and white, you learn a little bit more about what works and what doesn’t.

You will start to understand how you can make your photos interesting by leveraging elements other than colour, which will ultimately make you a better photographer.

Mistake #2: You Make Your Fine Art Photography Black and White by Simply Desaturating

When I started my photography journey, my black and white photography workflow looked like this: 

Convert jpg to black and white by desaturating in Photoshop – done.

If you’re the same, I would highly recommend you do it a different way from now on.

Why You Should Shoot in RAW for Black and White Photography

First of all, if you want to take your photography seriously, please don’t shoot in jpeg anymore – in fact, why not switch your camera shooting mode to RAW right now!!!

I know, the files are pretty large, but it’s so worth it because you gain infinitely more editing options and higher image quality.

The reason why I recommend shooting RAW for black and white fine art photography is this:

RAW is a file format that captures all the data from your camera sensor without any compression or processing, unlike JPEG.

When you then convert your images to black and white later on, you will have way more information to work with and can really finetune the image adjustments.

Why I Recommend Converting to Black and White from Colour Files

As a side note: by now, you may be wondering why I’m not recommending you set your camera to black and white shooting mode to begin with, as many other photographers would advise.

After all, this is a useful method because you can see the photo in black and white as you’re shooting.

This is easier and will develop your “seeing in black and white” skills slightly quicker.

However, if you’re interested in fine art photography, I think the better method is converting a RAW colour file to greyscale after shooting.

This way, you can adjust each colour value independently and really compose the perfect black and white image.

My Black and White Conversion Workflow

I recommend this workflow:

Shoot your image in RAW.

Then, open it in Photoshop (or equivalent image editing software) and use the adjustment layer “Layer” – “New Adjustment Layer” – “Black and White”.

You can now see an adjustment slider for each individual colour – simply adjust each to your liking.

This is an amazing method because you have so much control, and yet it only takes a few seconds!

You can then also adjust the exposure, highlights, shadows and contrast, if needed. And that’s it!

Mistake #3: You’re Trying to Save a Bad Photo by Making it Black and White

Let’s be honest, I think we’ve all done it – not being particularly happy with a shot, we just make it black and white, hoping to create a piece of art.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work.

You can’t really save photos that weren’t great to begin with by converting them to greyscale.

Next time you’re in this situation, be honest with yourself:

Is the photo just not that great?

If so, it’s best to move on.

In fact, why not grab your camera and take some new photos, this time trying to “optimise” for greyscale conversion by looking out for strong lines, graphic or geometric shapes, patterns, structures, shadows, scenes with high contrast (e.g. a landscape in bright sunlight), or simple, striking compositions?

The more you do this, the more you learn to “see” in black and white, resulting in more beautiful photos that don’t need to be saved 😊

If you want help with composition and taking better photos in general, check out my previous post with lots of tips here.

And that’s it for today’s post! I hope you found it helpful.

P.S.: Do you enjoy taking portraits? Then check out my free ebook below: