There is just something about black and white photography that is elegant and classic. I love black and white photos – I love the look and the feel of them but you have to have the right ingredients for a black and white image to really work.

Things to consider when doing black and white photography are the brightness and contrast – low lighting conditions are often ideal for black and white photography. Beware of using a high ISO though as noise is more obvious in black and white photography.

Also, rather shoot the image in colour and convert to black and white in post-production – you have more control this way and can always use the image in colour if it works better that way, whereas shooting in black and white doesn;t give you the option of converting to colour.

You also have more control when shooting in RAW as opposed to Jpeg, but make sure you have enough space on your memory sticks as well as big resources on your pc to handle raw images.

 Other things to consider are shapes and textures. because you don’t have colours to draw your attention, you need to create drama and a point of interest with either your lighting or using shapes to draw the eye.

There are lots of fun things you can do with black and white photograhs (as with colour) and it is a whole genre of it’s own, but used correctly, it can be very powerful and effective.