Black and White Editing
The fourth and final aspect I am going to look at with in Composition is Black and White photography or monochrome. With this technique I am going to try and put the use of the other three techniques and combine them into one photo.
Before editing this photo I realised that there were a few areas that I didn’t want to include because they could distract the reader from the actual photo like slight lens glare and litter, however once I got rid of them I realised that I liked the photo in full colour as well but I still decided to carry out the procedure of making it black and white.
The next step was simple and that was converting the image to black and white and it instantly does it to an automatic scale, in which the software believes is the right colour balance for the photo.
The last step I took doesn’t have to be made but I wanted to experiment the difference that the sliders make to the photo filter so the screenshot above shows how much I adjusted the difference colour sliders to get the affect in the photo that you see.
For this photo I took inspiration from Ian Bramham’s similar photo. The photo is of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral and the photo really doesn’t give it justice for its beauty and size and because of this I wanted to try my best to present the cathedral is the best possible way and I also resulted in turning the photo black and white to give it that extra affect.
The main focal point is without a shadow of a doubt the cathedral for one main reason and that is because it takes up over 70% of the picture but over little part of the photo like the lamppost glare contrast to the photo which I believe present the Cathedral in a better way but still not justifiable as the real thing.
You can see the expert detail within this picture makes the photo look very modern even though it is a medieval looking building which Is what I wanted to succeed and I could get more detail through using a monochrome affect because it is only concentrates on a small amount of colours rather than the full lots because it allows the software to bring out the shadows and brighter parts of the photos as you can see.
To conclude the reason why I took inspiration for this from Ian Bramham’s portfolio is that I realised that night shots look a lot better in black and white because as I said it brings out all the detail you wouldn’t get without editing them another use to take a photo like this is to shoot it on a non-flash setting because it automatically sets the aperture and shutter speed to the required setting for the photo to be in total view so that is why I chose black and white photography for Composition.