What defines black and white photography? If your answer is black and white—you’re wrong. These images are about more than just blacks and whites, and here’s why.
Black and white photography isn’t always black and white.
The key to taking an excellent black and white image isn’t about the blacks or the whites—it’s about what is in between. These different shades of gray is called the tonal range, and within one image, the grays can be very different from each other, or very similar.
When Maegan Schlottman set out to edit an image taken on the boardwalk, the blacks and whites and even the grays just weren’t speaking to her. The shot had been taken on a cold day—and that element was missing from the shot.
Until she decided to stray just a little from the traditional black and white. By adding a little bit of sepia and blue toning into the image, she found the exact look she was going for—and it’s why On The Boardwalk is this week’s featured photo.
“This shot was definitely spur of the moment,” Maegan said. “I was actually doing a family photo shoot for my in-laws at the boardwalk. The weather was crisp and calm. As we would walk further down the boardwalk looking for new spots to take some family portraits.”
“I kept seeing how calm the water was, how blue it looked as the sky reflected so perfectly off it. I knew I couldn’t pass the moment up!”
While she knew she wanted to use the dock as a leading line and capture the reflected pylons, Maegan worked with a few different angles before settling on this one. The biggest challenge was making a busy scene not look like a busy image, but since the original image had only about four colors, the black and white tones worked well to help define the focus of the shot.
When she first started editing the shot, Maegan wasn’t impressed with the first conversion to black and white. “I started changing the tonal hues and ended up with a mix of blue and sepia. It really added to the drama of the shot, and in a way almost makes it look like it was taken later in the day,” she said. “I like the blue toning over the sepia as it helps bring out the feeling of it being a colder day. Oddly, the combination of the sepia and blue is my favorite. The sepia enhances the calm of the day and the blue keeps the cold nip in the air.”
When asked if she’d do anything different, Maegan said she’d follow her instructor’s advice and adjust her position just a bit so that the first pole doesn’t meet the top of the buildings in the background.
“The depth of the tonal range and composition are perfect,” said Learn Black and White Photography tutor Cindil Ashley. “The reflections in the water are great and the leading lines of the dock coming from the left side of the frame creates a really dynamic shot.”
Maegan has been taking photos for about two years. Her favorite subject is mother nature—like in On The Boardwalk, as well as macro. “That’s what photography is to me: Catching the feeling of that one moment. Fine tuning the shot so that even if you weren’t there, you can almost feel what it was like to be there at that precise moment.”
Want to learn how to capture a feeling through tonal range? You can find out more in the Learn Black and White Photography class!
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