Why do so many wedding photographers take photographs in black and white?

Why do so many wedding photographers take photographs in black and white

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If you're in the un-enviable position of looking for a wedding photographer to photograph your wedding in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire or Warwickshire - you may discover that a lot of the photographs you see on the photographers websites are in black and white. Why is this? Surely with the advancements in digital technology, modern professional cameras are superb at taking colour photographs. Years ago, black and white photographs were the only type of photographs that you could have, and key players in photographic development worked very hard to create colour film to capture the detail and colour that we see in real life. Wedding Photographs in the by-gone days were purely in black and white and when colour film finally became mainstream there was much excitement about the glorious technicolour that it allowed.

It may be that it is much easier to make a photograph with high impact - that is to say a photograph that tugs at your emotions more, if it is in black and white. Black and white wedding photographs have a nostalgic air to them and as we see the world generally in colour, it's a lot easier to make a statement if your photograph is in black and white as it's not what we're used to seeing. It's rare to see a photograph of ourselves in black and white and most people when taking holiday snaps or photographs of their children will take them in colour. This rarity adds impact - because it's something we're not used to seeing we probably see it as more specialist or professional.

Stripping away the colour in a photograph also helps to remove some of the photographs distractions. A red bag on a green lawn, left carelessly in the background of a wedding photograph will be far less distracting if the photograph is in black and white or muted colours. It's an easy way to remove distractions and imperfections in the photograph, which may make some viewers see them as "better" whatever "better" is.

Photographing a scene so that it appears as it appeared in real life is actually quite difficult. Professional photographers know how to manipulate the camera settings in order to get the exposure (how light or dark a scene is) to resemble the truth. Colour saturation (how colourful) and white balance (how warm or cool the colour tones are) are other variables which affect how a scene looks and are other aspects of a photograph that the professional photographer must get right. By removing all colour, you do away with the need to worry about white balance - there is no warmth or coolness in black and white photographs and the colour saturation is zero. So displaying your photographs in black and white or monochrome is in theory easier than in colour. I say "in theory" as it's very easy to make a flat or dull black and white photograph - all black and white wedding photographs are not the same.

Modern professional wedding cameras are very good at taking photographs in low light and retaining image quality. The professional range of Canon or Nikon cameras have very large, very sensitive sensors (the digital equivalent to film) this sensitivity allows wedding photographs such as the first dance or indoor evening photographs to be taken without flash. The cheaper amateur cameras do not retain as much detail as their professional counterparts in low light - some of that lack of detail is shown up on the image as noise, which looks a little bit like the grain you get in some black and white photographs. Wedding photographers with cheaper cameras can therefore make the grainy photograph look more acceptable by converting it to black and white. As the grain manifests itself as small dots of random colour speckles in the photographs, black and white shows this distraction less.

Of course, black and white photography has its place in wedding photography. If a scene has high pattern or texture, a correct black and white colour conversion can add a lot of value to a picture. The conversion has to be done correctly though. Each photograph is different - you can't just press the "convert to greyscale" button and expect an artistic image to be produced. Time must be take to get the greyscale colour balance correct, by altering the saturation and luminance of each individual colour in the image before stripping the picture back to monochrome. Each photograph that is converted to black and white had to be crafted manually for the highest impact and professional wedding photographers that care about producing the very best images will take a great deal of time and effort to producing these images.

When done correctly and on the right photograph, black and white images can look stunning, just make sure the photographer you're using for your wedding isn't using monochrome as a technique to cover up their lack of skill or experience.

http://www.articlesbase.com/weddings-articles/why-do-so-many-wedding-photographers-take-photographs-in-black-and-white-3731790.html

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