Working in Black and White

For this part of the course, as suggested in the course materials, I have decided to present my work in black and white (greyscale). I watched some short videos presented by photographer Ben Long as part of the video course Foundations of Photography: Black and White. I didn't want to get too involved with the completely different subject of black and white photography at this stage, but I did want to see how working in black and white at this stage of the course could help me with elements of design in photography. Ben Long makes the following points regarding black and white photography that are relevant to this part of the course:

• Black and white simplifies an image, taking away colour that in itself can be very distracting, and as such is a good choice of working for student photographers.
• Black and white accentuates form, shape, texture, highlights and shadows.
• Can create interesting images from subjects and scenes that would potentially be dull in colour.
• When thinking of B&W, you find yourself paying more attention to contrast, tone, geometry and line.

Elements of design is about dissecting a scene into its constituent parts, and certainly in terms of the exercises it is about subordinating the subject to its geometry. With all this in mind, I thought that thinking in black and white, then converting my images to black in white in photoshop would be the best approach at this time.