Photography 1: The Art of Photography

Project: Colour Relationships.
Exercise: Colours into tones in black-and-white.

For this exercise I arranged a small group of objects with very pure, contrasting colours and even lighting.  The still life was processed first in colour, then copies processed into different black-and-white versions using a black and white conversion program.

One image was produced using no filter (neutral), then using a yellow filter, red filter, blue filter and a green filter.  This produced 5 black and white images each with different tonal effects.  Use of the filters allowed certain objects to be emphasised while suppressing others.

The six images are shown below:

Original; Nikon D300; 18-105mm lens; F18; 1/10s

This is the original photograph of a still life that includes red, yellow, green and blue.  A mid-grey card is included so that the white balance can be adjusted in the raw file.

Neutral; Nikon D300; 18-105mm lens; F18; 1/10s

 This image has been converted to black and white without using a filter.  Each colour has the same brightness.

Yellow Filter; Nikon D300; 18-105mm lens; F18; 1/10s

A yellow filter was used to produce this black and white image.  The result is that the tone of the yellow item is lighter as it is the same colour as the filter.  This occurs because more of the yellow light is transmitted through the yellow filter.

Red Filter; Nikon D300; 18-105mm lens; F18; 1/10s

Here the tone of the red tomato is lighter than in the neutral image.  However as the colour is not pure red it is not very bright.  The tone of the green pepper is made the darkest by the filter as it is the complimentary colour of red.

Blue Filter; Nikon D300; 18-105mm lens; F18; 1/10s

The tone of the blue background to the image is made lighter by the blue filter.

Green Filter; Nikon D300; 18-105mm lens; F18; 1/10s

The tone of the green pepper is made lighter by the use of the green filter.  The tone of the red tomato is made darker as it is the complementary colour of red.

What have I learned from this exercise?

A strongly coloured filter will allow certain colours to pass through, but block others.  Eg, for a red rose against a blue sky, a red filter will allow all of the light from the rose petals to pass through, but block most of the blue light from the sky.  If placed in front of a camera lens, the effect on the image in black and white would be a bright rose and a very dark sky.

Each filter lightens the tone of any object that has the same colour, and darkens the tone of the others.  The darkening effect is strongest on the complementary colour.

In black and white imagery, this effect gives a powerful tonal control, and allows certain objects to be emphasised in a scene while suppressing others.

The different filters can be applied to the original image to obtain the best balance of tones in the scene.