Black and white in wedding photography

You will notice by browsing the galleries of this site that a number of photos are in black and white. It may seem strange to do without color, in the digital age. After all, isn’t a black and white photo “less expressive” than a color photo? More than half a century after the democratization of the color process, more than 20 years after the advent of digital and editing software, why do photographers still produce so many black and white photographs? When and how do they decide to do it?

Color arrives in 1903 with the autochrome process of the Lumière brothers. This is an opportunity to advise you to visit the Lumière Museum in Lyon! In the 60s, color became widespread in photojournalism. Color reproduction became cheap and marked a form of modernity. At the same time, color television became the norm and this norm was transmitted to the world of publishing and advertising.

However, black and white photography did not disappear. On the contrary! Faced with the modernity of advertising photography, black and white symbolizes more than ever art and creation as shown so well by Helmut Newton or Richard Avedon.

Fenqiang Liu

Black and white film photography in technically accessible

Black and white photo printing is accessible to everyone. The chemicals used are not (or little) toxic. The temperature and dosage of the treatment baths support inaccuracies. And it is a certain pleasure to see your print appear in the developer of the red room.

Conversely, color photography printing is done to the nearest tenth of a degree, the products used are toxic and the manipulations are done in total darkness! There is frankly not much pleasure in making a color print … That’s why it has always been reserved for machines and that all photo clubs are equipped with black and white lab and not color.

Nick Brandt

Black and white is a visual grammar

Among amateur photographers, the aesthetics of black and white have always remained strongly anchored, especially in the fields of portrait and street photography. And this, for two main reasons: All photography enthusiasts have been imbued with the immense work of the great names in photography such as Henri Cartier Bresson, Elliott Erwitt or Irving Penn to name a few. These great masters produced their art at a time when black and white was the norm.

A real culture of black and white image was thus created and will continue to influence photography in a lasting way.

However, in the digital age, the influence of the ancients and the ease of use are not enough, by themselves, to explain why black and white remains so present in the aesthetics of modern photography. It is therefore because black and white photography offers something more!

Sebastiao Salgado

Black and white puts reality at a distance

When you start in photography, you notice that switching a photo to black and white gives it a special character, a little something that tends towards the artistic.

Removing colors is removing elements that bring us closer to reality, or at least to the perception we have of it. Black and white takes us away from our daily experience and its banality.

And what is art if not a personal representation of the world? Isn’t poetry about taking a step aside to observe and describe the world differently? By making us take this step aside, black and white photography helps us to get closer to art and therefore to our emotions.

Damon Winter

Black and white is abstract. Color is not. By looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world – JOEL STERNFELD

A black and white photography goes to the essentials

A photograph tells a story. It guides the reader’s eye to convey an emotion. There too, by removing the colors, and therefore a layer of information, a black and white photograph allows you to direct the eye much more easily towards what matters.

The human eye naturally navigates an image according to:

Luminance. The eye first goes to the highlights and bright elements
Tones. Warm colors (red, orange …) also attract the eye, more than cold colors (blue, green …)
Saturation. Saturated colors also attract the eye, more than pastel colors.

Patrick Camboulive

When you look at an image, your brain chooses to make it travel according to these three criteria. With black and white, only luminance guides you.

The most beautiful luxury is simplicity – PROVERBE KURDE

Typically, in wedding photography, the preparations are sometimes done in hair salons. In these salons, the colors of the walls are generally very bright, very flashy, in shades of red, purple, magenta … The visual marketing justifies its choices. These tones symbolize creativity, youth, passion …

But in photography, these large areas of color often “pollute” the reading of an image. An exchange of looks between the bride and her best friend will then be blurred by the saturated purple of the wall in the background. Switching the image to black and white, with some localized luminance adjustments, is then a very good way to “tell” your eye where to look.

In black and white, I feel like I’m getting closer to the essence of my story – KADIR VAN LOHUIZEN

In the same way, a photo with a lot of colorful elements in the background, even bathed in blur, will attract the eye and divert attention from what is really important in the image. Black and white will then help to purify the image, to make it simpler to read.

Some professional photographers display their photos in black and white on the LCD screen of their camera, even if the final photo will be processed in color. This allows them to focus on the essentials: the exposure and composition of their photos. I don’t practice this method but it’s not impossible that I’ll get there one day.

Others consider black and white not as a choice of photo processing among others, but as a creative technique in its own right, a directive technique in this case. It is about showing without frills, not reality, but the message of the photographer. Black and white is a search for minimalism.

Of course, color also has its say in photographic creation and many wedding photographers have made it their specialty (Victor Lax, Rocio Vega, etc.). It’s simply another artistic approach that would also deserve our attention.

Lee Jeffries

Black and white photography is timeless

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Color betrays its era. The instagram filters of our time, the garish tone mapping of the 2000s, the uncertain white balances of our first digital compacts, the yellowed polaroids of our childhood, the sepia of our grandparents …

If you are passionate about photography and have seen thousands of images, it becomes easy for you to guess the age of a color photograph, even if no other clue helps you.

Conversely, apart from the yellowing of a poorly preserved paper, a black and white remains a black and white. Only the constituent elements of the image will betray the era of a shot, the clothing style, the design of the objects …

This is what makes some portraits so fascinating:

Our current cameras are capable of recording 16 million different chromatic values. Our image editing software can make these colors dance like a fireworks display launched from a carousel. Yet black and white photography is no less meaningful today than yesterday. It even gives us a break in the rush of our digital lives. It is the tool of a graphic language that tends towards simplicity, purity and minimalism. Things that are missing from our time. Things that speak to me as a man and as a photographer.