what makes good black and white photos stand out

[Terrywoodenpic]

Thank you that's very interesting! That's exactly why I wrote I much prefer the work of e.g. Robert Adams to that of his more famous (sur)-namesake.

Ansel Adams produced some fantastic images even by today's standards.
That shows to me that the image is far more important than how it is produced.
For all his seeming oddities he was far more the artist and craftsman than most of his imitators and detractors today.
His work is credited and displayed in galleries and museums everywhere, his heritage will live on in perpetuity.

That does not mean of course that we should slavishly follow his styles or techniques., they were of another time.
Fashions and sciences change over time, but we can learn a lot from the past.

The biggest lesson we can take from him. Is that the result trumps the technique. It is fair game to use what you can to encapsulate your vision.
Like in all great art there are no rules.

 

[trypdal]

Ansel Adams produced some fantastic images even by today's standards.
That shows to me that the image is far more important than how it is produced.
For all his seeming oddities he was far more the artist and craftsman than most of his imitators and detractors today.
His work is credited and displayed in galleries and museums everywhere, his heritage will live on in perpetuity.

That does not mean of course that we should slavishly follow his styles or techniques., they were of another time.
Fashions and sciences change over time, but we can learn a lot from the past.

The biggest lesson we can take from him. Is that the result trumps the technique. It is fair game to use what you can to encapsulate your vision.
Like in all great art there are no rules.

I agree that there are no rules but there are clear preferences.

I personally dislike his results. Surely art and photography is a matter of taste. I find his work grossly overrated. I really don't think he produced fantastic images at all.

That's just my opinion of course, you are free to disagree and wax lyrical about him.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I agree that there are no rules but there are clear preferences.

I personally dislike his results. Surely art and photography is a matter of taste. I find his work grossly overrated. I really don't think he produced fantastic images at all.

That's just my opinion of course, you are free to disagree and wax lyrical about him.

Compare for a moment his work and photographic achievements against mine or yours, and you will see why I hold his work with some respect.
Not that he is a particular favourite of mine. In particular I have almost no regard for his zone system which is totally impractical.
However these greats are to be respected for their achievements, not whether their work is fashionable today.

However one of his prints has sold for more than I ever earned in a year, so he was doing something right.

 

[Kell]

Let me start by saying everyone's opinion is equally valid, because photography is an art form and we all see it differently.

So here's how I think about B&W.

I can't say what absolutely makes a good picture, but I can say what I don't like. And that is images that are just grey. To me a really strong B&W should have areas of pure black and pure white. They can be small, but I think the pure blacks give a much richer image, and the pure whites help it stop being dirty and dingy. I'd possibly concede that it could be one or the other if you were going for a high key/low key look.

To that end, if you are using LightRoom, there's a technique called the 'J' trick that shows you where your clipping is happening. It works for both B&W and colour, though I rarely use it when processing colour images. Essentially, you adjust your sliders until you just have some clipping (or go overboard and have loads) to ensure a full range of tones.

I recently went to the Sebastião Salgado exhibition and to me that what a well-exposed/printed shot should look like. I mean, it helps that his subject matter is often important. I'd also argue that seeing an image blown up that big and hung in a gallery also adds to the aura of whether or not it's 'good'*.

I don't know much about he approaches his work, but one trick to try if you're looking to see a scene in B&W is to squint at it and see if you can differentiate the colours. Very often the only thing that separates them is the colour rather than the tone. If you can't see the differences, then they'll merge into one grey mass in a conversion - unless as has been previously mentioned that there's some form of texture or other way of creating/seeing contrast.

The best thing to do is look at B&W photography online and bookmark the ones you like and then work out yourself what it is you like about them. Is it purely subject matter? Is it the aesthetic of the image itself?

*Back to the Ansel Adams debate, there is an aura about him that smacks a little of emperor's new clothes. Not so much from him, but from other people. There was an experiment I read about recently where they got some Ansel Adams images that were less well known and asked people to judge them. I think within the same experiment they also had images that were attributed to him.

Essentially, once people knew it was his work, they rated it more highly than the images that were just presented as anonymous - despite being the same photographer.

Now, I'm not sure how robust this experiment was. I don't really remember it well enough to know if the anonymous images would be images that Adams himself was proud of. Or if it came from his back catalogue.

 

[Kell]

They used to make directors monochromatic viewing filters for use in film work and help directors and lighting cameramen visualise how the scene would look in black and white..
Max factor made a range of film make up, mostly greens, blues. And yellow, this looked terrible to the eye but made actors and actresses look great on film.

A friend of mine was the Art Director for a Ford (cars) advert in the 1980s.It was shot in B&W because the idea demanded it (though I can't for the life of me remember which car it was for).

They had to get all the old Hammer House of Horror film crews out of retirement because they knew how to light and make-up the actors to look good in B&W and modern film crews didn't.

 

[myotis]

Let me start by saying everyone's opinion is equally valid, because photography is an art form and we all see it differently.

So here's how I think about B&W.

I can't say what absolutely makes a good picture, but I can say what I don't like. And that is images that are just grey. To me a really strong B&W should have areas of pure black and pure white. They can be small, but I think the pure blacks give a much richer image, and the pure whites help it stop being dirty and dingy. I'd possibly concede that it could be one or the other if you were going for a high key/low key look.

To that end, if you are using LightRoom, there's a technique called the 'J' trick that shows you where your clipping is happening. It works for both B&W and colour, though I rarely use it when processing colour images. Essentially, you adjust your sliders until you just have some clipping (or go overboard and have loads) to ensure a full range of tones.

I recently went to the Sebastião Salgado exhibition and to me that what a well-exposed/printed shot should look like. I mean, it helps that his subject matter is often important. I'd also argue that seeing an image blown up that big and hung in a gallery also adds to the aura of whether or not it's 'good'*.

I don't know much about he approaches his work, but one trick to try if you're looking to see a scene in B&W is to squint at it and see if you can differentiate the colours. Very often the only thing that separates them is the colour rather than the tone. If you can't see the differences, then they'll merge into one grey mass in a conversion - unless as has been previously mentioned that there's some form of texture or other way of creating/seeing contrast.

The best thing to do is look at B&W photography online and bookmark the ones you like and then work out yourself what it is you like about them. Is it purely subject matter? Is it the aesthetic of the image itself?

*Back to the Ansel Adams debate, there is an aura about him that smacks a little of emperor's new clothes. Not so much from him, but from other people. There was an experiment I read about recently where they got some Ansel Adams images that were less well known and asked people to judge them. I think within the same experiment they also had images that were attributed to him.

Essentially, once people knew it was his work, they rated it more highly than the images that were just presented as anonymous - despite being the same photographer.

Now, I'm not sure how robust this experiment was. I don't really remember it well enough to know if the anonymous images would be images that Adams himself was proud of. Or if it came from his back catalogue.

Ansel Adams said to Stephen Shore in 1976 that:

"I had a creative hot streak in the 40s and since then I've been pot boiling"

This is from Stephen Shore's "Modern Instances:The craft of photography. A memoir" Which is mysteriously undated, but I'm confident its 2022

On the same theme, Adams said something similar to Ralph Gibson (I think) along the lines that from the 40s, he was under so much pressure to churn out pictures that looked the way that an "Ansel Adams" picture should look, it killed his creativity. I can't remember the exact words, nor can I find it bowsing through th Ralph Gibson book I thought it was in, but I'm confident I have captured the jist of what he was saying

 

[ancient_mariner]

Essentially, once people knew it was his work, they rated it more highly than the images that were just presented as anonymous - despite being the same photographer.

This is often a problem, people seeing with their ears. The whole issue of perception is a minefield.

 

[trypdal]

However one of his prints has sold for more than I ever earned in a year, so he was doing something right.

Well.. Either that, or he was embedded in a very favourable context, which is the American 'fine art' photography circle, with its Guggenheims, its MOMAs, its Szarkowskis and so on.

He was a product of his time, and probably the right product at the right time, in a country that badly needed its very own mythopoeia. The USA really lusted for someone to come forward and coat its National Parks, its vast expanses of nature, its Yosemite rocks in some sort of 'mythical' glitter, and placed him on a truly American 'national hero' pedestal. To many Americans, I've found, he's almost like an artistic prophet, someone who should be exempt from criticism.

Not for me. I'm not American, and I'm not a native English speaker either. My cultural references are VERY different from those of an Anglophone photographer. His images of gnarled pine tree bark tell me very little, and so do his images of some nondescript river bending against a backdrop of mountains etc.

There are scores of photographers from e.g. Iran, China, Afghanistan, Sweden, England, France, Italy, Russia, Germany who are - to me - vastly more inspiring photographers than Adams, but we don't get to hear much about them on English-speaking forums, because they never exhibited at MOMA or went for a glass of brandy with Szarkowski or simply made it big in the USA.

So - in my view - the comparison should not be between my work or your work and Adams', but rather between Adams' work and the work of other great photographers who inspire us.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Well.. Either that, or he was embedded in a very favourable context, which is the American 'fine art' photography circle, with its Guggenheims, its MOMAs, its Szarkowskis and so on.

He was a product of his time, and probably the right product at the right time, in a country that badly needed its very own mythopoeia. The USA really lusted for someone to come forward and coat its National Parks, its vast expanses of nature, its Yosemite rocks in some sort of 'mythical' glitter, and placed him on a truly American 'national hero' pedestal. To many Americans, I've found, he's almost like an artistic prophet, someone who should be exempt from criticism.

Not for me. I'm not American, and I'm not a native English speaker either. My cultural references are VERY different from those of an Anglophone photographer. His images of gnarled pine tree bark tell me very little, and so do his images of some nondescript river bending against a backdrop of mountains etc.

There are scores of photographers from e.g. Iran, China, Afghanistan, Sweden, England, France, Italy, Russia, Germany who are - to me - vastly more inspiring photographers than Adams, but we don't get to hear much about them on English-speaking forums, because they never exhibited at MOMA or made friends with Szarkowski or simply made it big in the USA.

So - in my view - the comparison should not be between my work or your work and Adams', but rather between Adams work and the work of other great photographers who inspire us.

There have always been great photographers, most of them remain unknown both to their fellows and to the general public.
I have a small book of about a hundred of AA's earlier images that was somehow published without the blessing of his foundation.
It included a few of his more famous ones but most I would call also rans. If judged by the time they were taken, and using the equipment and materials available they were mostly well above the standard being produced by other mountain/wilderness photographers. Like all leaders and forerunners in a field, his work became both an inspiration and target for younger generation to shoot at. What was new and exciting at the time has become old hat and boring today , not least because he had so many imitators.
I would suggest, every mountain photographer today has his better work somewhere in the back of their mind, when in the field. This is neither a good nor a bad thing, it the natural result of wide spread distribution and knowledge of his work. Much like just about everyone recognises the music of the great classical composers. Even if they have no interest in it. And probably can not put a name to any piece.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Ansel Adams said to Stephen Shore in 1976 that:

"I had a creative hot streak in the 40s and since then I've been pot boiling"

This is from Stephen Shore's "Modern Instances:The craft of photography. A memoir" Which is mysteriously undated, but I'm confident its 2022

On the same theme, Adams said something similar to Ralph Gibson (I think) along the lines that from the 40s, he was under so much pressure to churn out pictures that looked the way that an "Ansel Adams" picture should look, it killed his creativity. I can't remember the exact words, nor can I find it bowsing through th Ralph Gibson book I thought it was in, but I'm confident I have captured the jist of what he was saying

I would suggest that is right for most photographers. Our work reaches a peak and then gets less spontaneously good. By the 50's AA'S work had become Iconic in the same way the Bill Brandt and Cartier Bresson's had. For us students at that time, they were held up as masters and exemplars. However by then their best work was behind them. And the David Bailey's of the world were coming to the fore as photographic visionaries.
At that time I could name and recognise all the leading industrial photographers of the day. Today they are long forgotten by me and most everyone. We no longer even publish such work except in academic and trade journals. In the sixties I was one of only two photographers in London, that I knew, who were specialising in shop interiors and fittings. Today I doubt there are any working in such a narrow field. It would not be viable.

 

[droj]

This is often a problem, people seeing with their ears. The whole issue of perception is a minefield.

Quite. Though consensus can be reinforcing if assessed with a genuine, critical 'eye' ...

 

[droj]

This is from Stephen Shore's "Modern Instances:The craft of photography. A memoir" Which is mysteriously undated, but I'm confident its 2022

Yes - 1st ed, Mack, 2022. Unusually, its date's at the back, not the front! But it's there ...

 

[droj]

I can't say what absolutely makes a good picture, but I can say what I don't like. And that is images that are just grey. To me a really strong B&W should have areas of pure black and pure white. They can be small, but I think the pure blacks give a much richer image, and the pure whites help it stop being dirty and dingy.

If there's a flaw or shortcoming in your argument, it may be flagged by that word 'like'. Not that your argument is faulty - but neither is it all-inclusive about what can be good. What you've endorsed is just one sort of 'look'. Other tonal approaches can be equally appropriate & convincing, even if they don't 'shout'. ;-)

 

[benc98]

My advice to the OP is to look at black and white photography that you enjoy and then make your own notes about why it works. Then have a ago at replicating some of those ideas and approaches

 

[droj]

My advice to the OP is to look at black and white photography that you enjoy and then make your own notes about why it works. Then have a ago at replicating some of those ideas and approaches

Whilst also remaining open ...