5 tips to shoot monochrome

[davidc]

Perhaps this may have been useful before our recent challenge?

http://petapixel.com/2014/11/24/6-black ... thusiasts/

Still, some good advice. I do like to see the tonal contrast and texture/shape one emphasised as I always feel it's the one most often overlooked. How many street scenes do we see that are just a jumbled mess of shapes and texture with no strong central focal point? I tihnk it's a bit of a common mistake that converting to mono is easy and always works, with street photos especially being an example of how that can fail.

[Mike Farley]

I do like to see the tonal contrast and texture/shape one emphasised as I always feel it's the one most often overlooked. How many street scenes do we see that are just a jumbled mess of shapes and texture with no strong central focal point? I tihnk it's a bit of a common mistake that converting to mono is easy and always works, with street photos especially being an example of how that can fail.

For me, that was the most useful reminder about shooting mono. I know that some exponents advocate ensuring that every image has a range of tones from black through to white and this usually gives better results than when the photo consists of just midtones. My normal practice is to convert promising shots to mono, although more often than not I promptly discard the results.