black & White tutorial needed

[ebooysen]

Hi

I saw some black & White photographs on this website

31 Stunning Black and White Subject Study Photos on Imagekind

and I wondered how they did it, especially the first photo of the bird where the background is completely black.

Can anyone please if possible send me a link on a tutorial on how to do this.

Thanks

[Tito87]

Originally Posted by ebooysen

Hi

I saw some black & White photographs on this website

31 Stunning Black and White Subject Study Photos on Imagekind

and I wondered how they did it, especially the first photo of the bird where the background is completely black.

Can anyone please if possible send me a link on a tutorial on how to do this.

Thanks

What editing program do you use?

[ebooysen]

Hi

At the moment I use Photoshop CS 5

[Tito87]

Originally Posted by ebooysen

Hi

At the moment I use Photoshop CS 5

photoshopessentials.com should get you going. Just look for the B&W conversion tutorials.

[dlambert]

One way to get that effect is to use a strobe in a (somewhat) dark setting, and expose for the strobe rather than for the background. As long as the subject is removed from the background a bit, you'll light the subject, but the background remains dark. This isn't just a B&W technique -- you can do this in color, too.

[AdrenoJunkie]

Originally Posted by dlambert

One way to get that effect is to use a strobe in a (somewhat) dark setting, and expose for the strobe rather than for the background. As long as the subject is removed from the background a bit, you'll light the subject, but the background remains dark. This isn't just a B&W technique -- you can do this in color, too.

To expand on this further, what he's saying is expose it so you're eliminating the ambient light and only exposing for the strobe. You do this by setting your shutterpeed to it's sync speed, which depending on your camera will be 1/200 or 1/250th. There are a few cameras that go higher and some older ones that are lower but those two speeds are typical. If you're outdoors in bright light you may need to go higher, in which case you'll need to use high speed sync. You then control your expsosure of your subject with aperture and flash power. Also your light to subject and subject to background ratio is important. Or if all of that is just too much of a PITA then just put something black behind your subject. Alot of outdoor flower photogs do just that. This also works without a strobe using just ambient. Here's a shot I did outside, middle of the day, bright sunlight. The background is actually the trunk of a tree. I just spot metered off the bright part of the leaf to properly expose that and let the rest be underexposed. This is natural light, no strobe.

This was shot at 1/250 f6.3 iso200

As for the B&W conversions, you're opening up a can of worms. There is a near endless number of ways to convert. It can be done in Camera Raw, a ton of ways in PS or there's a great plugin called Nik Silver Efex Pro. You're best bet is to search the threads here or google it. Then play around with a bunch of different methods til you find the ones you like. I say ones because different methods work better for different images

[ebooysen]

Hi
Thanks a lot for your advice, I am defiantly going to try this out. The above photo that you took is a realy great shot. =)

[NicolaB]

A quick easy technique (naturally the image needs be well lit and exposed to start):

CS5:

Add Gradient Map layer.
Click on the Gradient map and click a fraction to the right of the black square
Do the same to the left of the white square

This makes the blacks black and the whites white. (If someone can tell me how to upload a screen shot I will show you)

This will often be enough. If you want more pop:

Add a softlight layer then adjust the fill to taste.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

To get the background black in my pic I burnt it (at the suggestion of Susan1970 - it really made the image 'pop'). Coincidentally, the before and after shot of this (in colour) is on my blog under 'Before & after' June post.

[NicolaB]

see also:
This thread

[Moonshadow76]

Creating a duo-tone image on Vimeo
A video I did a little while ago, technically a doutone.