What is black and white?

Ribs (Photo: Simon Meeds, 2022)

What is black and white? On the face of it, this question is a simple one.

Let's be clear I'm not about to argue the fine line between "black and white" and "monochrome". Strictly an image is "black and white" when there is no colour in an image: everything is black, white or shades of grey, whereas in a "monochrome" image the blacks and greys can be replaced by tones of any single colour: blue, brown, etc. But it's common to include all monochrome images when we talk about black and white.

I'm asking when is an image black and white or monochrome?

Black and white film

When I started in photography, and for the first 25 years or so of my photographic "career", at least 99% of black and white images were created by starting with a film with a monochrome emulsion, what we would call "black and white film". So when you set out for a photographic session with such a film you knew you were going to take images destined to be presented as monochrome - unless you were going to get into tinting, but lets ignore that possibility for now.

What's more, in photographic club circles, unlike with colour photography, there was an assumption that you would produce your own black and white prints in a darkroom. This meant you had control of the whole process from clicking the shutter to creating the print, and there could be quite a lot of creative effort involved in making that print.

Of course we can still use film and we can still create images in the darkroom, but we have a number of other options. One option is to use film to capture the image, develop the film, then scan that film so that we have a monochrome digital image which we can manipulate in the computer before printing it out.

A brief aside here: while in the darkroom scenario the creativity of the photographer is chiefly in the taking of the image in the camera and in the printing of the image, I would suggest that in the digital scenario the creativity is in the taking and in the editing. Digital printing is mostly if not entirely a mechanical exercise. We can print using our own printer, but there is little loss of control if we use a commercial printing service, which if well chosen may be able to provide a far better printer than we could afford to buy, and often produces prints far more cheaply that we ever could ourselves.

Black and white digital camera

The next level of creating a monochrome image is to use a digital camera designed specifically to take black and white images. These are relatively rare, usually quite expensive, and unless you aim to shoot only in black and white probably difficult to justify.

Nevertheless, this again means that we are going out to shoot specifically for a monochrome reproduction.

The image coming from the camera will be edited and printed in just the same way as the scanned image in the previous example.

Black and white jpeg

If we don't have a digital camera dedicated to black and white photography we can configure our "colour" digital camera to record all its images at a particular time in the form of black and white jpeg files. Again this means that we are setting out specifically to record images for monochrome reproduction.

The disadvantage with this approach is that many photographers prefer to use their camera's raw file format for recording images but here we are creating the more limited jpg files. The main advantage of raw files is that there is more exposure latitude which provides more scope for post-processing.

Hybrid black and white

Sorry, not a very good title for this subsection, but then I think the available implementation(s) on cameras may differ. I am suggesting here that you can record an image as a raw file (see above) but see the results on your camera screen as black and white, making it easier to visualise the black and white image you've taken.

My guess is there may be two ways of doing this:

1. Configure your camera to record each image as both raw and jpg where the jpg is black and white, and that is the image you see on the camera's LCD screen
2. Configure your camera to record each image as a raw file, but to embed in it a black and white jpg version of that image (raw files always have an embedded jpg). The assumption is that it is the embedded jpg that is shown on the camera's LCD screen

This technique provides you with immediate feedback of the black and white result, something you would never have enjoyed with film, but allows you at a later date to use the raw file to create a colour image or a black and white image processed differently to the "default" black and white jpg created by the camera.

Standard raw image

Here you use your "colour" digital camera to record a raw file in the "usual way". We will process it later in the computer to create either a colour or a monochrome image. The question is whether you go out intending to shoot images for monochrome reproduction or whether you go out with an open mind, take some photographs (possibly some with the intention of using them to create monochrome end results) and decide later which ones should be colour and which ones monochrome.

Conclusion

I'm not saying that any of these techniques is better than others, but they have their differences.

One thing to consider is what we might call colour mapping. If we take our photographs with black and white film, we can accept the way that the film (look up the differences between panchromatic and orthochromatic film if you like), or we can fix a colour filter in front of the camera's lens to affect how the colours are "mapped" to blacks and whites. For example a red filter will turn the blue of a sky darker.

When we use a digital camera which produces a black and white image, whether that is a dedicated black and white camera or one configured to produce a black and white jpg file, we will also have to use the same coloured filters if we wish to affect the colour mapping.

If we use a digital camera producing a raw file or some other format capturing the whole visible spectrum we have two options. We could still use coloured filters which will give the colour image a "colour cast", but will assist in applying the desired effect to a processed black and white image file, or we could apply this colour mapping in post-processing on the computer by adjusting the red, green and blue colour channels when converting the colour image to black and white.

Again all of this is perfectly valid.

In all these cases we end up with a black and white (or monochrome) image and after all it is the end product that matters. I certainly don't care how we get there and what tools we use.

The main issue then is the original intent. Did we shoot for monochrome or did we shoot for colour and just happen to think it might look OK in monochrome later? This matters because the aims of colour and black and white images are different, or at least they should be. Black and white images rely on and emphasise form, texture and tone, while colour images provide more variety of input and sometimes create visual overload. In black and white images we are usually looking for simplicity.

So, if we shoot for colour and convert to black and white are we somehow cheating? No, I don't think we're cheating, but if we call ourselves black and white workers we should probably be bringing more intent to the task than this. Perhaps we should at least be asking ourselves why our images ought to be presented in monochrome.

Postscript

Why did I ask this question in the first place and why was it important?

Someone in our camera club is starting a black and white group. Of course he is entitled to do so and I might feel inclined to join if I had time to devote to it, but I was not certain in 2022 how you would define a black and white worker since few if any of our colleagues are using film never mind black and white film. And using digital, few (admittedly some) are shooting digital with the original intent of creating black and white images. I'm not sure that someone almost accidentally creating the odd black and white image is really a black and white worker.

It certainly might be a good exercise to go out on occasion (or more often if you feel inclined) with the intention of creating images for a black and white rendering.

I'd be interested to know the organiser's views on these matters and on what constitutes shooting for black and white.