Natural light portraiture is a passion of so many photographers out there. But for many of these photographers, there’s a little formula that they always do. It goes something like this: aperture priority, focus on the eye, shoot. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. And for the most part, it’s copied over and over again because it works. With black and white photography, that idea can surely work. However, there are other things that a photographer can do to create even better photos.
Leading lines: they’re one of the first things that every photographer learns about when it comes to shooting images in school. If you learned online and without format training, then you probably studied the rule of thirds first. But when you’re looking at a photo, one of the best ways ro artfully create an image that photographers have traditionally been taught is by using leading lines. Call it a rule that needs to be broken, it’s still a very effective one that when done correctly, can trump pretty much any other rule out there with the exception of using text in an image. For many years, black and white photography was the way to go. But when color came around, things changed quite a bit.So let’s explore leading lines and black and white photography.
If you’ve ever had prints made or seen them, then chances are that they’re all from the same Fujifilm paper used by Walgreens, Costco, Duane Reade, etc. That’s a glossy paper and that’s what people are so used to seeing. I’m going to tackle glossy in a bit. But first, I should really emphasize and talk about matte paper. Instead of these pharmacy prints, you should liken matte paper more to the types of paper that one would typically write on. Even then, matte paper isn’t really done a whole lot of justice by saying that.
My creative influences are widely ranged from the great photographers like Lindbergh, Avedon, Demarchelier, over literature like Paulo Coelho and Charles Bukowski right over to the cinematic world.
La Noir Image is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter to take our next step as a business. For less than the cost of your weekly coffee budget, you can get a year’s worth of inspiration sent to you every month. “Make it a black and white!” That’s the thought that so many photographer starting out have when they can’t figure out a way to make their images better in the editing process. The truth is that yes it’s easy: black and white makes a lot of images that looked terrible in color look better immediately just through the monochrome process. But…