Creative Black and White: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques
Product Description
Learn how breaking photographic rules can result in stunning black-and-white photos
Black-and-white photography poses unique challenges; without color to guide the eye, contrast, lighting, and composition take on even more importance. Renowned photographer Harold Davis explains these elements and demonstrates the basic rules of black and white photography as well as when and how to break them. He breaks through the complexity of this photographic medium, explores opportunities for black-and-white imagery, and shows how to capitalize on every one.
Richly illustrated with the author’s own images, this beautiful guide presents the skills needed for great black-and-white photos while encouraging your confidence and creativity.
- Goes beyond basics to teach photographers how to conquer the challenges posed by black-and-white photography
- Appeals to professionals and serious amateurs who are interested in exploring creative black-and-white imagery
- Presents photography fundamentals and shows how black and white requires some of the rules to be bent
- Encourages creative thinking and confidence
- Lavishly illustrated with Harold Davis’s outstanding monochromatic photos
Whether you’re a professional just venturing into black and white or a serious amateur, Creative Black & White will both educate and inspire you.
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Harold Davis came up with one more book from Creative Photography series. And this one dedicated to black and white photography in great depth. Anyone who already know and read other books from H. Davis is well aware that book is full of examples, inspiration and ability to build your skills on another higher level. This particular book contains of first class material for everyone: beginner or advance photographer. There are many pages in the book on specifics of black & white photography composition and pre-visualization, on how to see the world in monochrome and how monochrome is actually convey light. Davis made a great deal also on showing up technique on converting color digital images into black & white image using Photoshop and some other plugins especially NIK software.
The way Davis teaches is the best one can have, he does not push reader to do just what is in the book he freely shares his experience and ideas to inspire reader and that is the best way to learn. He shows the way to use camera and/or software post-processing an image and emphasizing that there are many other ways to achieve the result of making B&W image. Another important feature of the book is that every photos accompanied with detailed exposure description, so that is easy to replicate and learn the techniques. The book requires slowly reading since it is needed to be used as tutorial as well as good reading material. The last thing I wanted to mention is that anyone should visit H. Davis web site and subscribe for his Newsletter and if you live around Bay Area you should participate in his workshops (me personally is not that lucky - I live on the East coast). Once more I would like to say that this is the latest installment in his series of Creative Photography series and all other books are very much written the same good way and must have for every serious photographer.
Rating: 5 / 5
Creative Black and White: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques
I couldn’t wait to open up my copy of Harold Davis’ book, “Creative Black and White”. At first glance I thought this book was going to enable me to convert color photos into Black and White, but also know when I’m taking the photo the settings I choose will make it a `great’ Black & White. This is not a medium I had any appreciation for before I read this book.
In the Introduction; “My goal in Creative Black & White is to be your companion. . . Together we’ll experience what it means to think in black and white. I’ll show you many of the visual ideas that can work well with black and white, and share my expertise and the technical approaches that can be used to create high quality digital black and white photos.” Boy did he deliver! Throughout the book he gave example after example of Black & White photos and showed us the settings in the camera he took of those photos to achieve the desired result.
I’m a dentist by trade and consider myself an `Advanced Hobbyist Amateur’. I’m the president of the local photography club; even write a daily blog for the club. I submit photos on a monthly basis and take photos for different organizations around town, but never thought about Black & White as a medium that was `artistic’ in my hands. “Creative Black and White” teaches the basics behind any good photograph, i.e. Contrast, Shape & Form. . . Shades of Gray. Check out the `Contents’ page and see how complete Harold covers the subject of Black & White and how simply he teaches you how you can do it.
He teaches how to convert color photos to Black & White using multiple techniques; Camera Raw, Photoshop, Lightroom and different Photoshop Plugins. He gives us many ways to achieve the desired result; he’s not married to one particular method. I’m anxious to try my hand at Black & White Photography. “Creative Black and White” has given me the confidence to expand my knowledge base on what subjects make great Black & White opportunities, how to properly `step by step’ convert from color to Black & White and also shows `before and after’ examples.
This book is the complete `how to’ book for those of us that had NO idea that Black & White photos had so much promise. I highly recommend this book and can’t wait to use it at our teaching sessions at the photography club. This will be a great opportunity for us as a club to try our hand at a subject only one or two have ever used.
Rating: 5 / 5
Creative Black and White: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques
Harold Davis’ new book on taking digital color photos and transforming them into creative black and white pictures is an inspiring read with a lot of examples and many ways to achieve your vision.
A focus of the book is to help you learn how to pre-visualize what the world of color that surrounds us in blank & white. To se the contrasts of light and shadow that are left when the color is removed from an image and I think the book does a good job of describing how to do that.
I really like the different ways that are covered in the book to transform your color images into blank & white, Photoshop, Lightroom, Silver Efex Pro, and Photomatix are all covered. Creating images with high-hey, low-key, split toning, HDR, hand coloring, and noise are all explored with examples and tips.
I found the HDR example especially interesting, using HDR methods to create a photo with a extraordinary range of shadows is really appealing to me and I plan on giving it a try soon.
I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in making amazing black & white photos.
I want to thank the author for the chance to review this book before its release.
Rating: 5 / 5
Creative Black and White: Digital Photography Tips and Techniques