Seeing in Black and White

To get a understanding a the different aesthetics of black and white photography we where given the task to take a series of black and white images.

While doing this task I kept in mind some of Ansel Adams theories, exposing for the blacks where you metre of the darkest part in the image and the reduce the exposure by 2 stops. This gives detail in both the blacks and the highlights whist keeping a bold contrast. I tied to shot with my maximum aperture to aid this method in getting the maximum detail possible. Adams created the zone system, by splitting up all the tones in to 12 zones accounting for the shade and the amount of detail with in that tone. Adams believed that you had to have all the zones present to create a perfect image. 

by removing the hue from the image it simplifies the images making the texture and tones stand out. understanding metering and tones is key to emphasising the feel of your images,  as an experiment I took the same image using evaluative metering and spot metering with Adam's exposing for the blacks technique 

The image above was expose using the evaluative metering of my d610 giving settings of 1/250s ƒ.14 ISO160. the metering has tried its best to create a average fray thoughtout the image, there is little contrast with in the tree branches

the image above was taken using spot metering aimed at the shadow of the tree, it gave settings of 1/160s ƒ14 and ISO160. the extra exposure time with in this image has aloud of the highlights to be more pronounced creating contrast in the branches. 

by removing the hue from the image it simplifies the images making the texture and tones stand out. understanding metering and tones is key to emphasising the feel of your images,