Seeing in Black and White?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.....

...well, when I was a photography student many years ago ... virtually everything I did was in black and white. I used to be able to envisage a final print in black and white and could shoot to capture either the harsh contrasty look or the gradual gradients of grey depending on the subject. I could see in my mind how skin tones would look in a finished print (high key and low key) and how a landscape could be exposed to produce vastly different end results. With the move to colour film (for weddings and portraits) I gradually lost this skill and in the digital world I no longer find it easy to see this way.

From some images in the gallery and the "your photos" section (malross73 being a recent example) I think it is clear that some people have the ability to see images in black and white, or do you just experiment with the digital negative and follow the results?

Do any of you share my experience or is it just me (again)

Seeing in B&W shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately most people have lost the skill of seeing depth in an image due to flat screen monitors.

It would have been unthinkable in the 60's - 80's to take candid street photos with anything longer than 50mm..... Nowdays some people use teles and even do portraits with teles

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Photography takes a lifetime and more to explore and tastes and styles wax and wane....

I too used black and white for most of my images, spending days in the darkroom and finally reaching a competent level of skill. I have seen people who are much better printers than me, and it is a real art form in itself producing a fine black and white print.

I suppose the method is the same though as regards viewing in black and white. We shoot in colour, take the scene away and then convert it to black and white. previously we just did the conversion in camera by using black and white film. The seeing bit should be the same, but our thought processes may be more attuned to colour these days.

Everything now is in colour, including newspapers, magazines, TV, whereas at first colour was too expensive to use universally. But it does make black and white even more powerful, when we get it right.

Despite having an interest in photography as a child, If I could afford a camera and film I would never have had the money to develop the film.

Since owning a DSLR I have experimented converting images to black and white, some work some don't. I think John makes a very valid point about tastes and styles, Personally I think good images can be planned and happen by chance regardless of being colour or B&W.

I think I am now developing a better understanding of light, textures, shape and angles, but what I see and think will work photographically is still an adventure. I think photoshop has made experimentation and creativity really accessible, but some of the old rules still need to be learned.

I've always seen the world as nature intended, in colour.

I used to think the same, until joining a local photo club a couple of years ago. The majority of members use digital and there equal numbers of club evening competitions for colour and monochrome prints - 5 of each during the season. This has has kindled my interest in mono, so that I am beginning to appreciate viewing, and attempting to work with, both color and mono.

Cheers.
Philip

I know the pics i posted yesterday certainly the shopping centre one i saw in black and white because i knew it would be far too busy in colour. I also find myself looking more at black and white images on flickr etc.

When I started in 1951 at the East Ham Grammar School Photo-Soc you had to be RICH to afford 'real COLOUR' fillum !! There was one boy whose Dad ran a chemists shop and he showed us some Kodacolor prints 5x5" -- they were all GREEN but it was the first Colour photography I had seen -- then came along FERRANIACOLOR and we learned how to develop the slides ourself!

I wonder what the equivalent price would be today Peter. I suspect many of us would be truly shocked at how much colour photography did cost.

I thought that might have been how you saw it - there are some scenes that can work as either colour or B&W (DavidStorm has some recent examples) - some just fail in B&W, yet some seem to be perfect for it, and I find that I can very occasionally see them this way!

I don't know whether it's the overdose of colour and HDR nowadays, but I'm finding myself looking at Flickr, Gallery, etc photos in B&W more often too. As JohnRiley says..

I'm going to make a conscious effort to "see in Black & White" and I'll start posting some of my results

It was seeing B&W photos at the club I was a member at also put me off B&W, the world is colourful.

I seem to recall some of the old timers (when I was a lad in the sixties) using a tinted glass filter (think it was dark green) to view what they wanted to photograph. The idea was that it removed the colour components to give an idea of the contrast, light balance etc. when mono film was used.

I think it was an old cinematography technique from the days of B&W filming.

Anyone know more about it?

You've summed it up very nicely. I'm sure ken knows more about this than I do, but it did exist for the purpose you describe. I've never used one personally.

One viewing filter I had was very dark purple.
Not really a lot of use it was very dark but it was
supposed to match panchromatic film.

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I still have and use a Kodak 'pan glass', although theses days it's only used for looking at clouds trying to figure out how long it'll take for the sun to come back out! Mine is a neutral dark grey and was supposed to give you a better idea of lighting ratios in a scene, never could figure out how or why though.