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Wednesday, May 14th, 2025
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Indian Chieftain Motorcycle Engine in Black and White. Prints, up to 30″ X 40″ are available here. Your print will not have watermarks!
Wednesday, June 5th, 2024
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The Trinity. Three overlapping forms above a diagonal beam on a gray background. Digital art. It is available from us as a print at https://fineartamerica.com/featured/the-trinity-gary-silverstein.html .
Monday, December 4th, 2023
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A bicycle sculpture in black and white. The color original high-resolution image is available from us on Pond5 at https://www.pond5.com/stock-images/photos/item/255157575-partial-blue-and-orange-bicycle-sculptures .
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Today, very few people are using film to create their images, and commercial photographers were early adopters of digital photographic equipment. I was one of the early ones. So, I was faced with the question: How does one make a black and white image with a digital camera? I can’t speak for all cameras, of course, as there are so many different ones. Some cameras have a facility built in to take a b/w photograph. We have an older point and shoot camera that doesn’t seem to have that capability. It also shoots only jpegs.
Our DSLRs, or digital single lens reflex cameras, on the other hand, are able to shoot in a b/w mode. Here are some caveats. When shooting a jpeg image in b/w mode, the effect is permanent – I am unable to find a way to reverse the format once the image has been taken and it is black and white, should I desire the image in color. We have Nikon DSLRs (this is our choice, and not an indictment of other brands), and they are also capable of shooting a “Raw Image.” Raw is usually a non-destructive format, meaning that changes to the image can be deleted and the image returned to the state in which it was taken. Raw is usually the choice of professionals, as there is more digital information left intact in the image, like color and density, than there is in a tiff or jpeg. Raw images can be manipulated by computer software a lot more than the aforementioned tiff or jpeg, and a raw image can be converted to other formats after manipulation. Here’s where there is an advantage to shooting raw: even if the camera is in b/w mode, I can again get a color image from the raw format. It seems the b/w mode is a filter in the camera, and if using the Nikon Capture NX2 software, it shows the image as a black and white, but the filter can be removed by the software. Other software, like Photoshop CS4 doesn’t even see the black and white filter, and shows the raw image as one with the original color! If taking a jpeg image with the same camera, the b/w effect is permanent!
We have a client, an advertising firm, who wants all the image samples we show them and the images they order in black and white, gray-scale. This is a lot of work, but it has its rewards. We have gotten great expertise in doing this, and we have a lot of images that can later be used in color or black and white for other things, as well as stock. These images are non-proprietary, meaning they aren’t of the client’s product, property, or personnel. They are images from the world around us, and are used in an editorial way
So, what is our workflow for this client? First, we shoot the images with a high-resolution digital camera, in color. Then we process them in the Nikon raw editor, Capture NX2. We tweak the color and density in this program and convert them to color tiffs. Next, we open the tiffs in Photoshop CS4 where we further process them, removing flaws, lightening and darkening specific areas on the image. Now, there are several ways to make a black and white image from color. We prefer using the black and white adjustment layers in CS4. It gives us a lot of ways to manipulate the image for contrast, density, and even filters the image like it was shot with a filter on the camera lens. Want a dark or black sky with white clouds? There are filters for that! (There’s an app for that!:-) ). After getting what I want in the look of the image, I convert the image to a gray-scale tiff. After I am done with the multitude of images I have created in this manner, I use Photoshop to batch the images to low-resolution jpegs, and put our copyright and/or logo on the sample images. This keeps unlicensed use from happening.
Next, I make a zip file out of all the sample images, and send them on to our client over the Internet, so they can choose which of the images they would like for their purposes. Once they let me know what they want, I can either put them in a zip file and send it to them over the ‘net, or burn them to a DVD and send them via carrier.
That is just how we deal with one client. Black and white photographs are abstract, different, and fun. They are also a lot of satisfying work.
– Gary Silverstein
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