Monday 5 May 2014

DPP Part 3 - Black and White - Exercise 2 Strength of Interpretation

DPP Part 3 - Black and White - Exercise 2 Strength of Interpretation

The purpose of this exercise is to choose 2 images I have already taken making more aggressive changes to overall brightness and contrast than would be reasonable with colour.

The purpose of the exercise is to apply the aggressive changes to the image for both colour and black and white versions:


  • A strong increase in contrast that will include clipping in at least the shadow areas. A pronounced s- curve
  • a low key or high treatment in which the entire brightness range is shifted up or down the scale



Image 1

Starting image is as follows:




Colour pronounced s-curve with strong contrast


Colour low key created by moving the starting black position to point 87 on levels


Mono with  pronounced s-curve with strong contrast


Mono low key created by moving the starting black position to point 87 on levels


Image 2

Starting image is as follows:


Colour pronounced s-curve with strong contrast


Black and White with pronounced s-curve with strong contrast


High Key colour with levels white reset to to 155


High Key black and white with levels white reset to to 155


Exercise Learning's
a) Under and over saturation of colour in an image will appear strange visually since our eyes are used to colours being fairly specific and within certain ranges of saturation. For example a car with a specific "paint job" or someone wearing an extremely bright coloured t-shirt will stand-out because they are not every day colours that the eyes will see on a regular basis

b) I think the human response to black and white images is that its not a form that the eyes will naturally see and as a result they eye will instead pick up other elements within the image such as tone, contrast, texture etc and this will busy the mind as the eyes explore the image

c) In a black and white image there appears to be more acceptable room for adjustment of the various tones and though in this exercise I have clearly used extremes the black and white images still retain an element of reality or perhaps forgiveness by the viewers' eyes. The eye is allowed instead to focus on the tonal range rather than almost dismissing a colour image because it just doesn't look right when colours are over or de-saturated

d) From my musings above it appears then that tonal manipulation in black and white images has much more acceptance and therefore post processing can be explored much further. For the photographer when composing images for conversion to black and white he must try to ignore the colours and focus on tonal range, in addition of course to contrast, texture, geometry and volume since these become the key elements within a black and white image and give the richness and perhaps an answer to why the image seems interesting

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