Leaves – Korwel Photography

I read an excellent post on seeing in black and white by Joseph Eckhert on Digital Photography School recently. One comment made me really curious. He states something to that meaning – color photography is best in soft light, black and white is best in strong, full of contrast light. Hmmm, never thought about it this way. To give it a try, I took an image shot during Worldwide Photo Walk – the leaves in bright light, surrounded by the area of shadow. It was almost a monochrome, with all the tones of green. But when I turned it black and white, it came to life. The bright, saturated color was no longer distracting- you could focus on the light and how it shapes form of the subject. I added a little green tint, as I prefer to add a bit of color to my black and white images- I used the color from David DuChemin’s Iceland Split Green, which he shared in his “Iceland – The monograph” e-book over a year ago.

A.Barlow says:

October 12, 2011 at 11:18 am

I agree with that statement in full. Although, soft light, like during a misty morning full of fog can be very dramatic in mono. I think, as with anything in photography, it depends on your subject and how you feel best to present it.

Nice bokeh in this shot. I like the little webs here and there also.

Izabela says:

October 12, 2011 at 1:42 pm

Thanks! I now like those webs, too, although at first I thought they are just too messy and almost removed them. Maybe because I was upset I did not catch the owner of the web on the image- and believe me, I tried…

Jessica Sweeney says:

October 16, 2011 at 2:34 pm

I agree that black and white doesn’t look great with the same kind of light as color. Nice example.