The term monochrome often refers to an image that is in different shades of a single hue. Consequently, monochrome photography involves the creation of images, in-camera or in post-production, which are in variations of just one color. It is common to hear terms like ‘hue’ and ‘color tint’ to describe the base color of a monochrome photo. Similarly, the word ‘cyanotype’ is used for cool, cyan blue tones and ‘sepia’ for warm, red-brown tones. All of these are classic examples of monochrome applications in photography, in addition to black and white. Bruce Weber Photographer mostly engages in monochrome photography, and hardly takes colored images.
It is common for people to think that monochrome photography and black and white photography are the same. But so is not the case. A black and white photograph only uses black, white and variations of grey. While these photos are definitely classed as monochrome as they feature a single color or variations of it, monochrome photos can be created with variations of red, blue or any other color in the spectrum. Nevertheless, black and white photos are the most common variant of monochrome photos. They are extremely compelling, especially when the contrast is strong. A good number of photographs taken by Bruce Weber Photographer are in fact in black and white.
Most digital cameras allow people to create monochrome images without even having to touch any kind of editing software. This is not just prevalent for DSLRs, but also for normal point cameras. In fact, monochrome pictures can even be taken through several smartphones. However, proper camera setting is important to ensure the quality of monochrome images. The very first thing one has to ensure is that their camera is set to shoot in RAW format. The majority of cameras shoot in RAW and JPEG formats. Latter is a smaller sized while as it captures just enough image data for the purpose of creating a reasonably detailed digital image. On the other hand, RAW is a much larger file as it retains almost all the image data captured by the sensor. People can always edit the RAW copies of their images with built-in software and convert it to a JPEG later for ease of use. Camera technology has advanced considerably over the years, and most cameras tend to have some time of in-camera RAW editing features. Most cameras additionally allow people to shoot in a monochrome capture mode. Mirror-less cameras even present a live-view of the scene in monochrome.
Photographers may even use filters today to polish their monochrome images. Diverse colors of filters can block distinctive colored lights, thereby changing the tonal values of grays, whites and blacks, as per the photographer. Even though there are color filters that can manage the contrast in black and white or monochrome images, they only work for cameras that can shoot in monochrome. More details on shooting good monochrome photographs can be found on the web.
