Challenge Yourself to Shoot Black & White

Today’s post by Joe Farace

Tip: Be sure to read Mark’s post ‘Facebook 5-day Black & White Challenge.’

One of the things that I like to do to get out of a photographic is to shoot in direct monochrome mode. It doesn’t have to be all of the images that you make during a session; maybe just a few.

If you worry about what happens if (when?) you change your mind and would have preferred that the original be in color, there are several options: Most mirrorless cameras have a RAW+JPEG option that lets you capture a monochrome (JPEG) and color (RAW) file at the same time. It takes more space on your memory card but the writing on my Olympus and Panasonic mirrorless cameras seems instantaneous. And with SD cards at all time low prices, why not give it a try.

If you prefer, you can capture the original color and convert to monochrome later in the digital darkroom that’s not a bad idea either. The biggest differences is that all of my favorite retouching tools work better with color files, so more often than not when making portraits I shoot in color, do all my retouching on the color file and convert to monochrome later using Silver Efex Pro.

Joe is the author of “Posing for Portrait & Glamour Photography” which is available at your friendly neighborhood bookstore or Amazon.com.