The moment colour could be caught on film, a whole new era of photography started, and today, with digital being to main way of printing, editing & photographing, it’s hard to get colours matching over all spectrums, as everyone’s printers, computers & camera’s differs, having different LCD outputs.

Maybe because of all of technology’s advancement, I love going back to keeping it basic, and black & white photography, will always be a big love of mind. It’s something I admire, and very much enjoy, in other artists’ work, and my own. To understand black & white photography, one has to understand colour first, knowing what effect different colours and their intensities will have on either your black & white film, or on your digital camera. With black & white photography, comes an appeal, which is hard to explain or to understand, and it’s mostly in the degree of contrast a photo has. When flat, with not as much degrees of variation between the highlights and the shadows, it makes for an unattractive photograph.

Understanding contrast was a whole module on its own when I studied, and it takes a while to understand and to get right, as mostly light controls it. But when you get it spot on, it will make for photographs that people will do a double take on.

Yolandi Jacobsz

Black & White Photography