Why We Love BW Photos the Most

Black and white photography has always held a special place in our hearts. We think it’s the most pure version of photography. Stripped down to its essence - light and tone. Right now in the digital age post processing color and tone will go in and out of style, but a black and white is timeless. Our intention is to let the clothing, hairstyles, and surroundings give a sense of an era, not the processing trend of the week. And there is no easier way to accomplish that than with a beautiful BW conversion.

01: Color is easy

Black and white is a challenge. But pursuing strong black and white photos has made us better photographers. Here is a challenge for you. If you shoot raw you can have your images display BW in your camera. When you import them onto your computer to process you’ll see them in color. When you shoot in BW you are seeing shadows, composition, and tone without any distraction of color. This exercise has helped us shoot more dynamically.

02: Your photos will age with grace

Look, we’ve been victims to post production trends. Sometimes we want to go back and reprocess older color photos because they just don’t hold up as we continue to hone our craft. But our BW’s continue to age beautifully.

03: Black and white photos have heart

We love film photography, it’s how we started. BW feels filmic, it just does. There is a sense of nostalgia, heart, and romanticism that goes along with BW photos. It makes us feel something. And we think it makes others feel too. We’ve spent years working on our BW’s because it’s so important to us.

Here is an example of BW working effectively to evoke a sense of timelessness. The video looks like it could have been shoot 50 years ago, but we actually shot it last month. With BW, light is king and when we get down to it as photographers, the better we see the light, the better we are.

With Love,

AFFOB