RF-Photography

As many know by now, Adobe has released the first public beta version of Lightroom 4.  For those not familiar, Lightroom is Adobe’s terrific Digital Asset Management/Image Editing application.  Each version has been stronger than the previous and LR4 is no different.  I’m going to cover a couple of the major changes in this article but won’t go into all of the new features. Lightroom 4 Overview, con't >>

In the last instalment, we looked at a millenia-old compositional tool called the Golden Mean.  This time we’re going to look at one that’s popular more in photography and also can be a bit controversial.  It’s called The Rule of Thirds. I know, there’s that nasty “rule” word. Despite the name, again, think of it as a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule. The reason it’s one of the most basic is because it’s so simple to implement. The reason it’s so controversial is because some treat it like a dogmatic edict from the Mount Olympus of Photographic Art and think every image must adhere to it without wavering in the slightest. The simple part is true. The dogmatic edict part is pure codswallop. Or as some of my UK friends would say, bollocks. Photo Basics, Composition III - Rule of Thirds, con't >

We’ve talked about how various colours convert to different shades of grey in earlier instalments of this article series. We’ve also talked about the importance of certain colours in greyscale and about the different components that make up colour – and thus grey – in the third part of the series.

In this part of the series, we’re going to take a look at something more subtle but nonetheless relevant.  That’s white balance.  Can the choice of white balance affect a conversion from colour to black & white?  It definitely can.  This is something that film shooters have known for years, that the colour of the light in the scene would have an impact on the effect of colour contrast filters used on the lens and rendered on the film.  Intuitively it makes sense. Seeing in B&W Pt IV, con't >

In the first part of this series, I wrote about training the eye to ‘see’ in greyscale tones by converting colour into shades of grey. In this part of the series, we’ll break that down a little further.

In that first part of the series, we looked at how colours can translate into the same or similar shades of grey.  We also talked about the use of colour contrast filters with black & white film to block or pass certain wavelengths (colours) of light to expose the film differently and create tonal contrast.  We also looked at how this can be mimiced in the digital darkroom with the available tools. Seeing in B&W Pt III, con't >

With all due respect to the great songwriter Paul Simon, everything doesn’t look worse in black and white.

So what do I mean by ‘seeing in black and white’? Well, black and white photography is different from colour photography. Some might say, ‘Well, duh!’ But it is. It requires a different way of seeing and viewing. I’ve heard some people say they just can’t get black and white down. Everything just looks muddled. Why is that? It’s because in the technicolour world we live in colour provides visual interest and contrast. In black & white, or rather shades of grey, there is no direct colour to provide that contrast. In most cases, the contrast has to be created. This requires time to learn and requires a different way of seeing. Seeing in B&W, con't >

This is a follow up to my original Power of Lightroom article from just about a year ago.  Lightroom has been improved with each new version and while the black and white capability and the Adjustment Brush capability have been in place before v3, I thought I’d take the opportunity to toss in a new article on Lightroom for black and white.  Probably 80% of what I do with editing photos, I do now with Lightroom.  There are still some things I use Photoshop for and I’d never give up Photoshop but Lightroom is a wonderful piece of software. Power of Lightroom - Redux, con't >