Don’t be afraid of REAL black and white

Often you hear people talk about how they love Black and white photography, but in essence they actually mean shooting an image in black and white as in “no color”. And don’t get me wrong this is ok, I also love that. But sometimes it’s not bad to REALLY push your black and white approach.

This portrait was shot in color (of course) but I already knew I really wanted to push the contrast to the extreme, so I choose a rather harsh light source and aimed the light under a more directional angle and made sure I had enough definition in the original.

After this it was a matter of really pushing the contrast in Photoshop in combination with Alien Skin exposure to get an image that in essence was mostly black and white with as little gray in between as possible.

Now not all images are looking good with this technique, so you really have to shoot with this in mind. But if you do… the results can be awesome. But in all honesty it’s a personal taste 😀