Monochromatic HDR Photography: Shooting and Processing Black & White High Dynamic Range Photos

Harold Davis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135008567
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Digital Media

Update: The Kindle version of Monochromatic HDR Photography: Shooting and Processing Black & White High Dynamic Range Photos currently available for sale has been corrected and updated to address formatting issues.

Monochromatic HDR Photography is the first book intended to show photographers how to work at the intersection of two up-and-coming trends that are at the forefront of the digital revolution: Black & White and High Dynamic Range imaging.

The book explains techniques for extending dynamic range, monochromatic conversion methods and best practices where the two technologies intersect. Since successful digital monochromatic image creation generally requires using the color information inherent in RAW exposures, most case studies will be presented in full color.

In addition, Monochromatic HDR Photography provides extensive coverage of the creative vision required to successfully create monochromatic HDR images and the workflow necessary to make art prints from this specialized image making technique.

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Monochromatic HDR Photography

If you are creating digital black and white photos,

don’t just drop your color information. To get black

and white photos with good tonal range, and subtle

tonal variations, you need the color information as

well as the grayscale, or black, data. This is particularly

true with monochromatic HDR imagery.

The first reason that you need the color data included

in your image file is intuitively obvious. An RGB

image with all three color channels (Red, Green, and

Blue), has three times more data than a single-channel

black image. As you’d expect, grayscale files are about

one third the size—and contain about one third

the data—of the same image with the RGB color

information.

Size, of course, isn’t everything, and with photo-

graphic data the quality of that data often counts

more than how much data there is.

This leads to the second point about retaining color

information even if you are ultimately creating a

monochromatic image. Having the visual information

in the photo separated into colors channels allows you

to be more flexible and creative with how the color is

converted to black and white. For example, you can use

a digital filter that primarily operates on only one of the

channels—and decide which area of the image should

have this channel operation, and which shouldn’t.

Bear in mind that selective operations with color can

be performed in two different steps in the monochro-

matic HDR best practices workflow: in both the work

to process the color image, and in the subsequent

conversion to monochrome.

Using Color Information

BELOW: Before converting to monochrome,

I processed this HDR image using somewhat

emphatic color settings. That way, I could use

the exaggerated color information to make

the most compelling black and white version

possible.

RIGHT: In capturing this seemingly endless

road outside Paris, France, I knew I wanted

to create an HDR monochromatic image to

highlight the contrast between gray sky and

the stark bare line of trees.

27mm, nine exposures at shutter speeds ranging

from 5 seconds to 1/50 of a second, each exposure

at f/25 and ISO 200, tripod mounted; exposures

combined and converted to monochrome using

Nik HDR Efex Pro and Photoshop.

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Monochromatic HDR Photography

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

There is no shortage of techniques for con-

verting color images to black and white. These

techniques range from effortless and instant

to time-consuming and technical. Obviously,

there is a great deal less work involved in using

a camera setting to convert a JPEG on the

camera’s memory card to bla...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Introduction
• Monochromatic HDR Roadmap
• Digital Black and White Photography
• Extending Dynamic Range in the Field
• The RAW Deal
• Monochrome Conversion
• Resources