Color to monochrome

When you are shooting or printing out results in black and white (‘monochrome’), the multicolored world becomes simplified into different shades or tones of gray. A scarlet racing car against green bushes may reproduce as two grays that very nearly match. Try not to shoot monochrome pictures that rely a great deal on contrast of colors unless this will also reproduce as contrasty tones. Look at colors as ‘darks’ and ‘lights’. Remember too that an unimportant part of your subject visually much too strong and assertive (such as an orange door in a street scene) can probably be ignored because it will merge with its surroundings in black and white. Occasionally, when shooting in black and white you might want to adjust the way colors translate into monochrome. This can be done with the aid of a colored filter over the camera lens. More recently digital photographers tend to capture in color and then convert

the photo to grays using editing software such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. With this

approach, 'shoot color and then convert to gray', they always maintain the possibilities of both

color and black and white outcomes. Another advantage is that software-based conversion

provides the opportunity to alter how specific colors are mapped to gray which in turn allows

the photographer to translate color contrast to monochrome contrast during the conversion

process.