Monochrome: more than black and white

Colour perception is intensely tied up with emotion. There are psychological theories about how different colours affect us. It varies between cultures, but green or blue are often thought to be calming, while red or orange stimulate and, apparently, even make us feel hungry! These ideas feed into what we choose to wear, how we decorate our homes and, when it comes to photography, the images we take.

But not everybody perceives colours in the same way. UK-based fine art photographer Chris Ward was born with a condition called deuteranopia, which means he has difficulty seeing shades of green. He's found his vision is far more attuned to recognising fine detail, subtle contrast and varied texture than other people's, though – which serves him well as a specialist in monochrome imagery.

Often mistakenly used interchangeably with black and white, monochrome describes an image where everything in the frame appears as shades of a single colour. That could be any colour, but most commonly is grey or sepia. "What we think of as black and white is usually greyscale," Chris explains, as it incorporates a whole range of colour depths within grey. There are certain scenes that lend themselves especially well to monochrome – exactly those to which Chris's eye is naturally drawn. They might have textures or shadows that produce an interesting tonal range – dappled light in a forest, the rough patterns that appear in rocks or the rippling water of a river.

But pared-back, almost graphic shots can work just as well. "I think actually monochrome is less limited than colour, because it's already quite abstract so you can take an image further without it looking odd," says Chris. "If I were to heavily overexpose a colour image, it would look awful." In monochrome, though, overexposure can create a striking, minimalist style.

Chris was working with the Canon EOS R6, paired with a Canon RF 24-105mm F4-7.1 IS STM lens, to offer maximum flexibility when framing his shots. Lens choice for monochrome photography is much the same as for colour, what differs is how you compose your shot. "Instead of using colour to direct the viewer's eye, you use highlight and contrast. In the Picture Styles menu, you can select a style called 'monochrome' and within that, you'll find another menu where you can adjust everything from the sharpness to contrast," Chris advises. "You can also add an in-camera filter that changes the way the camera reacts to different colours, so it makes everything red, green, blue, yellow or orange appear darker." Chris himself tends to use the red filter for the way it darkens skies and foliage in landscapes, removing unwanted distractions.

If you're using a Canon EOS R System body with EF or EF-S lenses, the Drop-In Filter Mount Adapter EF-EOS R also enables you to use drop-in neutral density (ND) or polarising filters to bring your landscapes to life.

The images you shoot on the Canon EOS R6 using Picture Styles will be saved as compressed JPEG files. If you're shooting RAW, however, the files will preserve the full range of data captured by the camera. "The advantage of working with RAW files is that it gives me more information when editing," says Chris.

Day to day, Chris often shoots in colour. "I've spoken to various photographers and it seems that those who aren't colour-blind find it easier to shoot monochrome if they set the camera display to monochrome, whereas colour-blind photographers prefer to shoot in colour," he observes.

"A good bit of advice I was given early on about editing black and white was to always push it too far initially," says Chris. "When you move a slider along in your post-production software, there's going to be a window where the image looks good. If you go beyond that it looks bad; go below that and it's not enough," he continues. "But if you start from having done too much and bring it back, then the end result is pretty much the most you can get away with."

Surprisingly, colour can be a really important tool in editing monochrome. "When you convert to black and white in your editing software, it will give you access to colour channel sliders," he explains. "Because colour can be a tool to create contrast, when you're editing, you can identify where colour is playing that role and instead create contrast tonally."

There are usually six colour sliders, depending on your software, each affecting the luminance of a different colour channel. In a landscape shot, for example, you can change the tone of the sky by adjusting the blue and aqua sliders, and the tone of vegetation with the yellow and green sliders. The red slider can be useful if there's brick buildings, while the orange slider can help to improve skin tones in portraits.

"The most difficult scenario to work with is probably rocks next to grass," explains Chris. "When you convert that to monochrome, it can appear as a mid-tone mush where neither one stands out against the other. If you go into your editing software and change the brightness of the green and yellow channel, the rock stays the same but the grass becomes brighter. With flowers you can use the channels to separate tones in different parts of the plant."

On the occasions when Chris has shot a purely black and white image, he will set his printer to 'greyscale', but more often than not he prints in colour.

"I tend to put subtle tints on my images in post-production and then I will usually print it in colour," he says. "I'll increase the exposure level by about half a stop. Just because when you look at it on screen, it always looks brighter than when it comes out as a print."

Chris likes to use a split tone effect, applying a different colour to the highlights and shadows. "The highlights I will tend to make a little warmer and the shadows cooler. That really helps lift the image."

A compact A3 printer such as the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 would be ideal for delivering high-quality monochrome prints.

So, if the sound of experimenting with monochrome photography appeals to you, where's the best place to start? "Practice on flowers," Chris suggests. "There are a lot of subtle textures and different colours that you can play around with. If you can get flowers looking natural in monochrome – when very often, the colour is what defines a flower – then you can apply the same things that you've learned to everything else."

Many of history's most iconic photographs are in black and white – dramatic landscapes by Ansel Adams, empathetic portraiture by Dorothea Lange or vivid street scenes by Henri Cartier-Bresson. These image-makers weren't colour-blind, they were working with the tools available before colour photography caught on, but they saw the world differently, appreciating the patterns, the intricacies, the shades of grey.

Today, the monochrome options in your digital camera enable you to do the same thing – view your surroundings from an alternative perspective and interpret what you see in new ways.



Written by Rachel Segal Hamilton