The Magic of Black and White Photography

© 2007 Wazari Wazir | My Son | My Treasure

A lot of my friends have asked me about this picture taken in September 11 2007 when my son is twenty days old. Most people think that I’ve a studio in my house back then, and the funny thing is, some people think that I’m a “mother” and was surprise when they know that I’m a male, I’m a “father”, because normally a picture like this is taken by a women photographer, to those of you who are familiar with child or baby photography, who are familiar with the works from America or Europe will understand what I mean, most baby photography business belongs to a women, a mother.

Enough about that, I want to talk about “The Magic of Black and White Photography”, to be honest with you, actually there were no secret, there were no magic, I just use common sense to get this shot. I don’t have a studio lighting in my house, I don’t use flash for this picture and I don’t even use reflector, just pure natural light that was free to use. About the set up, the person holding my son there is none other than my wife, I ask her to wear a plain dark black T-Shirt and at the background there is a black velvet hanging on the door of my house, it was a normal velvet but stitch together to make it big so it can cover a big area.

There you go, there is my “common sense” not a secret, a black T-Shirt against a black velvet is all I need to get this shot. About the lighting, it was a “door” lighting, not a window light, since I take this shot outside my house, just at the entrance of my house where I hang out the black velvet against the door as a background. Exposure can be a bit tricky here since there was a lot of black area in the picture, the metering tend to overexposed the subject, so you need to be extra careful with the exposure, the best way to get the exposure is by using spot meter, take the reading from the baby, so your camera meter will calculated the right exposure to exposed the skin of the baby rather than take average reading of the scene.

I think in this digital era where you can see the result immediately at the back of your camera, the exposure is not that critical, if you see that your picture is too bright, by all mean adjust the exposure and that’s why I said, the easiest way to get the right exposure is by using spot meter in the camera, so your camera know where to take the reading but if you wanted to use matrix metering or center weight metering, use it but adjust it accordingly, we don’t want the velvet to be exposed properly, the velvet is not our main subject, let the velvet and the black T-Shirt be underexposed, totally black if possible without any details.

But the reality is, you won’t get a solid black without editing ( I’m referring to the picture above ), you won’t get a nice black like my picture here but the good news is, your job become a lot easier, you can edit faster, in Photoshop, just play with level or adjust the contrast a bit and you will get this result easily. Before that don’t forget to turn or convert your picture into black and white. Only after that you play around with level to deepen the black a bit and you’re done. Sometimes all you need is a little bit of creativity, a little bit of imagination and use your common sense. The magic happens when you know the secrets.

Related Post : The Magic of Black and White eBook

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