Black and White

The photos above are two of my favourites from my trip to Istanbul in September.  Funnily enough, they were rubbish straight out of the camera and I thought about deleting them before I started editing.  Both had distracting highlights and shadows and in the second photo one side of the man's face was completely over-exposed. But problems in the colour versions became features in black and white.    

Here's a second example, a photo I took of Matthias while we were waiting at the train station on evening recently.  The straight-out-of-the-camera (SOOC) is not bad, but the over-exposed halos from the lights are a little off-putting and the change in background from left to right looks weird.  The white balance is also not quite right and he's skin is a bit jaundiced.

In black and white, the light above his right eye is still a bit distracting, but overall I like the picture a lot more.  This trick for 'saving' photographs works best if you're unhappy with the color composition in some way, or if the shadows and highlights are too harsh.  Unfortunately it won't save an unfocused or badly composed shot.

Next week: Metering