Composing images without colour, as in all black-and-white photography, calls for a different sensibility. It involves training your eyes not to be influenced by the colours in scenes, paying more attention to the structure in a composition - the form of things defined by line, shape and volume. Arrange a still-life containing the colours red, yellow,green and blue. Include a piece of grey card in the set-up, ensuring the exposure shows the card as mid-grey.
Because I have a digital camera and use Photoshop to process my images, I will convert to monochrome and create the effect of the various filters within the software.
I looked around for something different to use for the still life, I did not want to use the obvious, fruit and veg. Examples of my first attempts are shown below.
Prior to taking the above photographs I had asked my daughter if she would paint her nails in the required colours. This I felt was what I had been looking for, something a bit different!
The colour image followed by the unfiltered black-and-white conversion.
I tried moving the colour sliders in the black-and-white adjustment layer, but could not improve on the preset filters available within Photoshop, the images are as follows.
Red filter effect.
Conclusion.
In the unfiltered image, blue,green and red are of a similar tone, yellow is slightly lighter and nearly the same grey as the skin on my daughters hand.
Red filter effect.
The red nail varnish has now changed to a much lighter tone. Yellow is almost white, very little change in the tone of green, however blue varnish is jet black. The tone of the skin is a lot lighter than the unfiltered photograph.
Yellow filter effect.
The tone of the red and yellow finger nails has hardly changed, but green is slightly lighter. Blue is still black in tone but has a little more definition, the skin tone is now almost white.
Green filter effect.
Red is now similar in tone to the unfiltered image but yellow is now lighter. The green finger nail is now a lighter grey than any other photograph. Blue appears lighter than the red and yellow filter effect but darker than the unfiltered image, the skin tone is darker than the previous two pictures.
Blue filter effect.
Red is now slightly darker than it was when unfiltered and yellow now a darker grey to any other image. The effect on green is similar to that of the red filter, the tone is darker than unfiltered. Blue appears almost white, with the tone of the hand being close to that of the unfiltered version.
