Inspired #17

Using black and white to create contrast.

Hello and welcome to Inspired, a weekly email for my paid subscribers. In this series I want to explore topics which I hope might spark some inspiration for your own photography. I will talk about my thought process for creating images, both in the field and in post processing. The posts will be linked in some way to the monthly challenges, hopefully giving you all lots of food for thought.

This month the photo challenge is all about contrast and in this weeks inspired post I wanted to discuss bringing out the contrast in a scene by processing in black and white.

This scene was taken in my local woodland. In colour I would not describe it as a particularly contrasty image, although the differences between the dark shadows and bright highlights are present. It was taken on a misty morning and the muted colour palette and even tones give the image a subtle feel lacking in any great contrast.

When I took this shot I was trying to create a series of black and white images that conveyed the essence of a pencil sketch. By this I mean images with very pale backgrounds (to represent the paper) and much darker shadow areas (to represent the pencil lines). While my attempts may not have worked perfectly I quite like the results and this is what I can up with for this particular scene.