Low Contrast Black and White effect

dnp · Jun 20, 2011

Hey guys!

I was looking around at some wedding photography blogs and I came across this one: http://www.rhemaimagesphotography.com/blog/2011/05/aaron-sarah-married/

Any Help as to how this photographer got the low contrast silvery tones in his black and white images? Also, the color images seems to have grey tones instead of black in the shadows. I just cant seem to figure it out.

thanks!

Blackjack · Jun 21, 2011

Of the many wedding sets I've seen online, this set is one of the most charming.

Big Mike · Jun 21, 2011

Welcome aboard.

Converting digital images to black and white is pretty easy....but there is also an almost unlimited freedom for adjusting the 'look' that you want. I use Adobe Lightroom for much of my editing/processing and I have probably 30 or 40 'presets' that will convert the image to monotone, each with a different look. And I can tweak the image further if the preset isn't exactly what I want.

So when I looked at that gallery, I can't say exactly what the artist did...but I didn't see anything that couldn't be done very easily in Photoshop, Lightroom etc.

KmH · Jun 21, 2011

None of those B&W photos are low contrast, but they are all underexposed.

ann · Jun 21, 2011

Thank you Keith; frankly I don't get "their" charm

shortpants · Jun 21, 2011

Can't say I'm a fan of this look. It just looks like no black, no white, and too dark overall.

Markw · Jun 21, 2011

All of the black and white photos on that site are, like KmH said, underexposed. That's how they got that look. But, aside from that, that is one of the most well-done wedding sessions I've seen thus far. The series is beautiful, as are most of their others. To get a real low-contrast black and white, take a photo, convert it to black and white, then pull the contrast slider down.

Mark

SBphotography · Jun 22, 2011

In the very last photo in the set everyones lower bodies are blurred and their top halves are in focus. How do you achieve this besides using blur tool in photoshop.. if this is a camera technique I'd love to know. I kind of like this style of underexposed b/w but not for every picture. I think this wedding set is very well done!

vtimagemaker · Jun 22, 2011

Looks like the photographer was going for a look that reminds me of tintypes. Looks like some extreme manipulation of the curves. Interesting, but not my cup of tea. I think those images processed "normally" in B&W would be a lot more powerful. Here's a Flikr page with a downloadable "tintype" action: FREE: Tintype Photoshop Action | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Followup Note: You can add a layer of black in Photoshop and play with the opacity. Simple.

Steve

shortpants · Jun 22, 2011

I actually love the pictures and feel the processing ruined them. And if you look at some of these, I don't think that they're underexposed. Look at the highlights in some of them, there's hardly any detailed. To me it just looks like they took a normal exposed picture, converted to black and white, and set the white output to around 200. Voila, grey.

mwcfarms · Jun 22, 2011

I am not a fan of the processing but the set is lovely thanks for sharing.

waikiki · Oct 10, 2011

This are very good photographs, in my opinion though the black and white conversion is not very good.
Some can like this kind of look, i like more contrast, more black and more white.

Derrel · Oct 10, 2011

Mcnany-Wedding-Blog078.jpg

Ewwww....the B&W looks bad compared with the color images...af if the B&W ones had been, oh, I dunno, underexposed by a second shooter or something, then salvaged...