Creative Black & White: Digital Photography Tips & Techniques, 2nd Edition
Harold Davis
ISBN: 978-1-68198-496-4
2nd Edition (1st printing, August 2019)
© 2019 Harold Davis
All images © Harold Davis unless otherwise noted
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964844
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Printed in Korea
We stand on the shoulders of giants. This book is dedicated with gratitude to the great black and white photographers of the twentieth century, particularly Ansel Adams, Karl Blossfeldt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Jerry Uelsmann, and Edward Weston.
Editor: Jocelyn Howell
Project manager: Lisa Brazieal
Marketing coordinator: Mercedes Murray
Interior design, layout, and type: Harold Davis Art & Photography Inc.
Cover design: Harold Davis Art & Photography Inc.
Cover photograph: Harold Davis
- Cover: Summer Grass—An interesting philosophic and ontological question is: When is a plant a weed, and when is it a flower? In any case, this is a photo of a definite weed; crab grass plucked from the side of a road and photographed in my studio, backlit using a light box.
Nikon D850, 55mm, 1/4 of a second at f/16 and ISO 64, tripod mounted, converted using LAB color techniques (see pages 214–231).
- Front piece: Monhegan Storm—Monhegan Island is a wonderful coastal Maine island that is mostly preserved as wilderness with very limited access. I walked across the island in the face of an oncoming storm and made a series of images of the violent outer Atlantic Ocean.
Nikon D810, 36mm, 8 seconds at f/25 and ISO 200, tripod mounted, converted to monochromatic using Photoshop and Nik Silver Efex Pro.
- Title page: D Ranch—Point Reyes National Seashore in California is a national park with inholdings that work the land in the old-fashioned way, as does the ranch shown in this image. The clouds are shown as elongated in the image, which is a result of a fairly long duration exposure (2 minutes).
Nikon D810, 28mm, 2 minutes at f/22 and ISO 31, 4X neutral density filter, tripod mounted.
- Above: Rooftops of Paris—From the top of one of the towers of Notre-Dame in Paris, the rooftops of this ancient city formed a pattern that enticed me to create this composition.
Nikon D850, 90mm, 1/320 of a second at f/9 and ISO 200, hand held, processed using the split-toning effect explained on pages 202–203.