I found this inspiring and interesting, with some ideas I hadn’t really considered in context. Nice images too.
23 Ninja Tips for Your Next Photowalk from the Cooperative of Photography.
One tip I would enhance: if you can’t shoot wirelessly with your camera, learn how point it without looking, and prep your camera and settings with a distracted air, then smoothly pout and shoot over your shoulder or sideways. If your camera has an adjustable LCD, that can also work wonders for getting more natural shots, especially from children.
The photographer in the video makes great use of black and white. Keep in mind with digital photography you can shoot in a black and white mode, but you can also convert from a color shot later with even more control over how the picture’s hues change to gray. It doesn’t have to be a simple desaturate or grayscale button.
So personally I prefer to shoot in color and convert afterwards, since it gives me more options in editing, but I do plan for black and white when possible. This often means seeking out opportunities for silhouettes and high contrast scenes where variations between light and dark provide an interesting pattern as much as the subject of a scene might, or literally become the subject of the scene.
Imagine tree leaves against a slightly cloudy sky. Black and white images gives you shapes where color ones lose some of the perceived contrast unless you have highly saturated colors. Just an example to get your mind spinning.
I think I’ll have to write a post with some conversion examples spanning the simple to dramatic ranges you can take a photo by playing with what you have in the camera versus what you actually saw when you snapped the picture.
In the meantime watch that video and take a virtual photo walk, then maybe a real one for some exercise.
–David
P.S. If you are providing images to someone for print in a black and white medium, flyer, poster, newsletter, program, whether it will photocopied, laser or press printed, a custom conversion to grayscale is a must. DO NOT drop color images straight into the layout. When you let the printer convert to color you will be unhappy with the washed out look and lost contrast and muddy image. Humans see color well, and we usually want to see more contrast in grayscale images to make up for the lack of color.
P.S. TIF format for printing, not JPG, and CMYK not RGB. A converted black and white JPG is okay for casual use, but JPG doesn’t benefit black and white, it’s tuned for saving color pictures best. TIF is a full resolution format that’s great for all purposes (there are other similar formats.) And just Google CMYK and RGB (Red-Green-Blue), RGB works great on screens, CMYK is for printing color and black and white accurately.
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