Page 203 - Friedman Archives

Creative Styles 203

“Sure!” I said, “but it would probably be much easier and cheaper to shoot
everything in color, and then just convert selected pictures to B&W in the
computer.”

“Absolutely not!” the bride insisted. “Black-and-white must be black-and-
white from start to finish!” (And trust me, being a reformed wedding
photographer, you do not want to argue with a bride!)
The engineer in me, who has learned that the results are more important
than the process, acquiesced to this very common mode of thinking in the
art world, where process is just as important (or perhaps more so) than the
results. (This is why darkroom-processed fiber-based prints are allowed in
art galleries, but inkjet prints containing the same quality image are not.
Go figure!)

TIP: B&W mode isn’t just a simple desaturation. Below is an image I took in
B&W mode, plus the Lightroom adjustments I had to make to make the RAW file
(taken at the same time) look the same as what came out of the camera. A little
extra contrast on the curves, a slightly non-standard conversion of the colors to
greyscale.