If you would like to learn more about my approach to black and white nature photography and photo processing, you can find my ebook and video course here.
If you spend much time looking at nature photography on social media, you have probably seen a common type of post: a photographer, lamenting the poor conditions at the time, explains how they tried to salvage a photo by converting it to black and white. Before you read any further, I’m asking you to forever dismiss this kind of thinking about working in black and white. Instead of seeing black and white as a backup processing option when the conditions you hoped for do not materialize, I encourage you to instead think about black and white nature photography as an expressive form that stands on its own and holds the potential to open up many new creative avenues for sharing the connections you make with the natural world. A key step in shifting this mindset is learning to see opportunities for black and white photography while you are out in nature.
Another example of bright midday light working well for black and white photography. Here, the lily pads take on a silvery look on a clear, sunny day. Canon R5, 77mm, f/16, 1/320 second, ISO 400, four file focus stack.
Understanding Tones, Tonal Relationships, and Tonal Contrast
When working with black and white photography in a digital workflow, the first essential lesson is understanding how colors convert to black, white, and gray tones. To start, a tone is simply the brightness or darkness of a specific, often very small, area within a photograph. Tones fall across a continuum, or tonal range, from black on the left to white on the right, with a full range of gray tones in between. Like a digital histogram, the darker tones fall on the left, the midtones are in the middle, and the brighter tones are on the right. The difference between the darkest tones and lightest tones in a photograph refers to the tonal range, and how these tones all interact with one another refers to the concept of tonal relationships.
A photograph with a large difference between its darkest and lightest tones will have more contrast and a wider tonal range. Conversely, a photograph with a smaller difference between its darkest and lightest tones will have less contrast, and a more narrow tonal range. All of the photos accompanying this article are higher contrast, with a big difference between the darkest and lightest tones. This choice represents my personal visual preferences, as I often like to highlight drama and intensity in my black and white photography. You may find that lower contrast black and white photography suits you better, and this is an equally valid artistic expression. The important lesson here is learning to identify how colors will convert to gray tones, and then when considering the whole scene, how well the tonal range and tonal relationships work in terms of telling a compelling visual story, either straight out of the camera or with additional processing work—all while out in nature.
Light reeds and lily pads against dark water in Acadia National Park. Canon R5, 500mm, f/14, 1/5 second, ISO 400, three file focus stack.
The Role of Color in Digital Black & White Photography
Although we are discussing black and white photography, colors play a major role in a digital workflow. Creating full color RAW files and then later converting them to black and white using photo processing software is a best practice. This is because the original colors in the file can later be manipulated to change the contrast when the file is being transformed into a black and white photograph.
Consider the photo of succulents below. In the color file, these succulents are green and pink. When the file is converted from color to black and white, the greens and pinks convert to a similar midtone gray. This subject, which looks very colorful and full of visual contrasts in person, will look quite dull when converted to monochrome—the vibrant colors, as gray tones, blend together. When processing this file, I reintroduced some tonal contrast by manipulating the greens and pinks. By darkening the greens and brightening the pinks, I separated the midtone grays to bring contrast back to the scene. While this step could make a color photo look quite garish, processing steps to more strongly emphasize tonal contrast and expand the tonal range can be an essential step in digital black and white photography. Being able to think through these steps and visualize the result while you are outside is an important skill to develop because it helps you see more opportunities in front of you.
Left: RAW file in color. Middle: Preset conversion to black and white using Adobe Lightroom. Right: customized processing using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to bring out the natural contrasts in the subject by darkening the greens and lightening the pinks, along with some other adjustments. Canon 6D, 100mm macro lens, f/20, 0.3 seconds, ISO 200.
Take some time to study the photographs included in this article. Identify the different tonal values (for example, look for pure black, pure white, light grays, dark grays, and midtone grays). Consider how the tonal range, which is the difference between the darkest and lightest tones, contributes to the overall feel of a photograph. Think about the subjects represented in a few of the photographs and how the original colors in the scene converted to gray tones, picking out a few examples of lighter colors converting to lighter grays and darker colors converting to darker grays. Next, take this learning outside and apply some of these ideas to the subjects in front of you. Understanding and applying these concepts will help you start to see opportunities, through understanding how a scene might translate in black and white, while you are working with your camera out in the natural world.
This beach in Iceland is a good example of a scene that is full of inherent or natural contrasts, with the bright white waves standing out from the dark sea stack, cliffs, and sand. Scenes like this are easier to convert to black and white because of these natural contrasts. Canon 6D, 50mm, f/16, 30 seconds, ISO 100.
Finding Subjects that Work Well in Black and White
When I first decided I wanted to experiment with black and white photography, I converted a few of my existing files using the preset options in Adobe Lightroom. The results were underwhelming, mostly because the files contained only muddy midtone grays, and I didn’t understand how I might be able to introduce more contrast back into the scene. In a sea of midtone grays, the interesting subjects visually faded to the background because of a lack of contrast and narrow tonal range. When I teach black and white photography, I find that this experience is common and often discourages photographers from going much further, with the path for moving beyond these dull, lifeless photographs remaining unclear.
To experience some early successes in working with black and white photography, a better approach can be to begin with subjects that have inherent qualities that work well in black and white without the need for extensive processing. A good place to start is subjects and scenes with naturally occurring tonal contrast, like the black sand beach in Iceland above. This scene is full of natural contrasts, with the black sand, sea stack, and cliffs in the background all falling to the darker side of the tonal range. The sky is full of a range of midtone grays, so it naturally stands out from the dark cliffs. The waves are bright white, so they, too, stand out from the surrounding scenery. While I did take some additional processing steps to finish this photograph, this scene easily works well in black and white because the scene is full of natural contrasts.
It is not necessary to travel to Iceland to see such examples all around you: bright white clouds against a darker blue sky, white aspen or birch trunks against a darker hillside, a white flower against a dark green foliage, or a layer of bright fog against a dark mountain. All of these subjects, and many like them in the natural world, inherently hold the tonal contrast that can help such scenes work well in black and white without much processing work. While eventually building your processing skills specific to black and white photography is an important step, working with these “easy wins” can make this genre of photography feel more accessible and enjoyable early on.
I photographed this wild cactus garden in Organ Pipe National Monument right as the sun was nearing the horizon. The sun was shining toward me, illuminating the rims of each cactus and adding contrast to the scene. Canon 5D Mark II, 280mm, f/16, 1 second, ISO 320.
Working with Varied Natural Lighting Throughout the Day
One of the primary reasons I enjoy working in black and white is because this kind of photography allows me to photograph all day, not just at sunrise and sunset. What many photographers consider “bad light” for color nature photography can work quite well for black and white photography because strong direct light and deep shadows can create interesting visual contrasts. For some of us, this shift to working throughout the day requires fresh open-mindedness, moving away from the false “good light” and “bad light” dichotomy, and considering all kinds of natural light to be full of potential.
I’ll use the example of the wild cactus garden above to explain how strong direct light created an opportunity to present this scene in black and white. For this photo, I was facing toward the afternoon sun, which was nearing the horizon behind the cactus garden. The fuzzy edges of the cactuses caught this light, creating a bright outline on each cactus while leaving the other parts of the scene in darker shadow. For many photographers working in color, this light might have felt too harsh but, in black and white, this light worked well by adding strong contrast between the bright fuzzy rims and the darker cactus bodies. Without this light on the cactus edges, there would be far less tonal contrast in the scene and it likely would not work as well in black and white.
This is an example of what I think of as an edge of light. Here, a bit of sunlight is hitting the front of this sandstone monolith and the rest falls into shadow. I try to stay attentive to this kind of ephemeral lighting since it can work well for black and white photography at any time of the day. Canon 6D, 84mm, f/14, 1/100 second, ISO 400.
With this lesson in mind, studying lighting conditions throughout the day is a key skill to develop for a nature photographer working in black and white. To start, look for the combination of direct light and deep shadows, and consider the resulting tonal range. Pay attention to reflective surfaces, like wet rocks, sand, or leaves, that might have very bright highlights or glare. For color photography, glare can sometimes be a big visual distraction when working with wet subjects. When converted to black and white, however, this glare can sometimes become an asset by creating bright highlights that add dynamic visual interest, contrast, and even a magical silvery look.
Seek out edges of light, where a small bit of direct light interacts with an otherwise dark landscape or subject in an interesting, nuanced, and often ephemeral way. Some examples: a field of sand dunes, with only one dune lit up by sun streaming through a small hole in an otherwise cloudy sky, or a single mountain highlighted by a beam of light. It takes effort to become attuned to these nuances but eventually, with time invested in developing your observational skills, you will see similar opportunities all around you to photograph throughout the day.
The dark cracks and the light mud show a natural contrast that can work well for black and white photography. If you are just getting started, looking for scenes with natural contrasts like this can be a good place to start. Canon R5, 74mm, f/13, 1/6 second, ISO 400.
Applying These Ideas in the Field
After you try some of the exercises suggested above, another way to visualize opportunities for black and white photography is to use your camera’s LCD in monochrome preview mode. While many skilled black and white photographers use this technique during every field session, I suggest that you try it a bit later on in your experimentation. It is important to develop a deeper understanding of the nuances of natural light throughout the day, to learn to see tones and tonal contrast, and to understand how colors might translate when converting a file to black and white, all before allowing your camera to help you as a shortcut.
Once you begin to recognize these nuances in light and contrast, and can better see these qualities on your own, using your camera’s monochrome preview as a learning and experimentation tool can be a good next step. While all digital cameras have a slightly different process to enable this mode, you should be able to set your camera to show the scene on your LCD in monochrome, with some customization options to increase contrast and other settings to get the preview closer to what a final, processed file might look like. (As discussed above, colors can be essential to processing digital black and white photographs, so you want to ensure that you are only seeing a preview on the LCD and still recording your files in full color RAW.)
In the color version of this photo, I retained detail in the foreground trees. In the black and white version, I significantly increased the contrast so the foreground trees look like silhouettes. This type of processing would look garish in color but works well in black and white. Canon R5, 428mm, f/11, 1/250 sec, ISO 400.
Beyond using your camera’s preview as a learning tool, I also encourage extensive experimentation and deep observation. Today’s outdoor photography culture can feel very results-oriented, so it can require a major shift in mindset to feel comfortable spending time on learning, thinking, and seeing without photos to show for the time invested. But, for a pursuit like black and white photography, this kind of experimentation while in the field is essential to experience the creative breakthroughs and build the set of skills that will serve you over the long-term. Spending time outside, photographing many different subjects under all different kinds of light, and then processing them in black and white at home is an essential learning process. And, as a reward for this investment of time, you may find a new, fulfilling way to share the connections you make with the natural world and see all sorts of possibilities you would have never previously imagined.
Note: This article was published in the October 2022 issue of Outdoor Photographer magazine, accompanied by one of my photos on the cover. Since I was never paid by the publishing company, I am re-sharing the article with some different photos here.
Sarah Marino is a full-time photographer, nature enthusiast, and writer based in southwestern Colorado. In addition to photographing grand landscapes, Sarah is best known for her photographs of smaller subjects including intimate landscapes, abstract renditions of natural subjects, and creative portraits of plants and trees. Sarah is the author or co-author of a diverse range of educational resources for nature photographers on subjects including composition and visual design, photographing nature’s small scenes, black and white photography, Death Valley National Park, and Yellowstone National Park. Sarah, a co-founder of the Nature First Alliance for Responsible Nature Photography, also seeks to promote the responsible stewardship of natural and wild places through her photography and teaching.