Black and White Landscape Photography

How Black & White Strikes a Different Chord (McCullin Method + Silver Efex)

It’s a curious thing but the photographers who have been most inspirational in my own photography which is largely but not exclusively shot in color, have been to a man (or woman) black and white photographers.

Black and White Strikes a Different Chord

In this article I want to discuss Black and White Landscape Photography, talk about some of my own influences and finish off by talking about the software that I use in my own black and white photography.

Influences

I’m thinking of Don McCullin, the war photographer turned landscape photographer, whose eerie portraits of the south of England show most vividly the mark of the individual who shot them, war leaves a mark on the soul and nowhere is this more evident than in McCullin’s photography. Another person whose work inspires me is Sebasteio Salgado, an absolute master of monochrome, whose work in South America is both moving and persuasive. As a lifelong conservationist and social documentarist, his work transcends genre. Sadly he died this week and his presence will be missed by many.

So what is it about black and white images that is so powerful. And how do we set about capturing that magic in our own work?

The most effective conditions for black and white photography include strong contrast, distinct shapes and dramatic lighting. the best black and white photography creates magic out of simplicity, think of Edward Weston’s famous shot of a pepper (Pepper No 30).

Qualities of Black and White Photography

So what are the qualities of a photograph that are amplified by black and white treatment? We can immediately identify drama and received impressions relating to art, class and quality. In part this is because all photography was black and white until 1935 when Kodachrome appeared on the market and it wasn’t until the 1960s that color photography began to gain acceptance as a fine art medium. Shockingly it wasn’t until 1976 and William Egglestone’s exhibition at MOMA that the fine art establishment accepted color photography.

Art, class and quality are not measurable so we can take a look at those qualities of an image that are.

Taking the elements of a photograph separately,

Contrast

Black and White images rely on a range of tones on the greyscale between black and white. A range of 11 tones was formally identified by landscape photographer Ansel Adams on a scale between 0 (Black) and 10 (White) with 5 representing middle grey. In Ansel Adams methodology these 11 tones are known as zones and it is these zones that are of interest to photographers working in black and white.

The Zone System

The original intention of the Zone system was to help photographers work out the exposure of a color scene for black and white film by analysing the range of tones available in the scene, however the system does have some uses for digital photography too. Check out “The Negative” by Ansel Adams (New Photo Series Edition) if you are interested, but beware, this is a book that rewards re-reading and may take several iterations to fully absorb!

High contrast is a look that has been used by many black and white photographers to great effect, Ray Metzger being a particular favourite of mine, but others worth checking out include Fan Ho, Josef Koudelka, Henri Cartier Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Elliot Erwitt, and of course Don McCullin and Sebasteio Salgado.

Shapes and Lines

Without color, shape and line become more important than ever, these are elements that enhance any photograph but in black and white their importance is amplified

Texture

Texture really comes alive in black and white, old buildings, the bark of a tree, the lines on a face, these make for very strong subjects.

Lighting

In black and white, the stronger the lighting the more dramatic the picture, I tend to look for light first and then make the composition around that light.

Subject

Landscapes, Portraits, Street Photography, Still Life, Abstract and Architecture all thrive in black and white. Landscapes less obviously but in the right circumstances black and white landscapes are very rewarding.

The McCullin Method

I thought it would be useful in this context to examine the recorded methods used by one of my heroes, Don McCullin. I’ve read his books, and seen the movie and these are my conclusion based on never having met the man but having studied his work closely.

Overview

Get it Right in Camera

I’m not a fan of the “get it right in camera” school of photography, although it demonstrably offers a straightforward journey from depressing the shutter button to exporting the image for printing or internet, digital photography allows at least as much manipulation as the darkroom and my own preference is to gather the data in camera that will enable me to make the image I want to make.

In this sense I see the camera as a data gathering device primarily and I don’t see the point in reducing my options by for example over exposing in camera for artistic effect because I can do that later in post. In this I differ from most of the photographers I cite as influencers! Make of that what you will..

Don McCullin’s photographic method employs a direct and impactful style . Historically he has prioritized documenting social and war conflicts, and his approach involves being present in the moment, observing the scene, and making deliberate choices about composition, focus, and exposure. What is interesting about McCullin is that his landscape images convey so much of the atmosphere you’d associate with war photography, they are dark, brooding pictures, sometimes bordering on the malevolent. Hugely impressive. I find myself wondering what Joe Cornish would have made of the same landscape.

Choice of Black and White

Don McCullin favours black and white over color, possibly because it enables a more visceral, impactful representation of a subject.

Film or Digital

McCullin is a craft oriented photographer and it is this that I most strongly relate to. He uses film cameras and shoots mainly in full manual mode giving him total control over the look and feel of the image.

Natural Light

Has McCullin ever used anything other than natural light? I don’t know for sure, but he is a master of seeing natural light and using it. to dramatic effect.

Handheld or Tripod

Handheld, always! As a war photographer a tripod would have been unthinkable and as a photographer who favours capturing the moment, whatever the moment brings, I think McCullin favours handheld.

Observational

McCullin is known, rightly, for his observational work which is to my mind world class. Some of his work has looked staged – the Finsbury Park Gang photo “Guvnors in Their Sunday Suits” certainly looks staged and by his own account was set up before the photo, but bearing in mind his extraordinary eye for composition in the moment many of his photographs may have had to have been staged by a lesser photographer. He favours observational photography and has the ability to make perfect compositions out of fast moving events.

Processing

McCullin is known to dislike extensive manipulation of photographs even cropping, preferring to capture the moment as it unfolds. See “Get it Right in Camera” above!.

Some Thoughts and Reflections

In his methodology, experience and practice, McCullin is almost the polar opposite of me. The only common elements are that we both photograph landscapes. I favour deliberation and composition where he favours observation and spontaneity. He favours film, I favour digital and we disagree entirely on processing. So why do I find his work so rewarding?

Part of the reason is that McCullin’s work is so powerful that it often transcends the medium and so differences in methodology cease to matter. And I think this is a point worth repeating. What we aspire to is never achieved by copying camera settings and processing techniques. These are necessary steps to take in a journey towards mastery, but they do not confer mastery in themselves.

This leads me to another point – we decide where the journey takes us and what the steps are. It’s much easier to see this in hindsight of course, but for what it’s worth I think it’s important to study other photographers work, to figure out how it was created and even at an early stage in the journey, copy it. But copying another photographer’s work is not an end in itself. The end of the photography journey is an abstraction, for me it is something along the lines of “to capture my experience of a landscape in a way that is impactful to others”. My study of the photographers listed in this article has helped to move me along in my journey but the most important steps have always been those taken with the camera into the mountains and deserts of Andalucía and actually taking photographs.

In an incredibly roundabout fashion, this brings me to processing black and white photographs!

Processing

Unless you have a Leica Monochrom, the chances are you will be shooting in colour and converting to black and white. I have been using Silver Efex from the Nik collection for many years and it still rules the roost as the most fully featured black and white conversion software.

Silver Efex

Silver Efex is a conversion software based on filters and presets. Presets are comprised of multiple filters and are very effective, but to create an individual look, use the controls attached to each filter to customise your image, adding local adjustments to suit the image.

Silver Efex directly supports the Ansel Adams zone system in identifying 11 shades of greyscale that can be selected.

This is how you can leverage the Zone System in Silver Efex:

1. Understand the Zone System:The Zone System assigns numerical values (0-10) to brightness levels, with 0 being pure black, 5 being mid-gray, and 10 being pure white. Each zone represents a specific range of tones and details. 
   
2. Open the Histogram:In Silver Efex, open the Loupe & Histogram panel and click the Histogram button. 
   
3. Identify the Zones: The histogram will display a scale of black to white, with zones (0-10) marked at the bottom.  
   
4. Visualize Zones in the Image: Hover the mouse pointer over a zone. The image will show a hatched overlay indicating which areas fall within that zone’s tonal range. 
   
5. Map Zones to Image Areas: Click a zone to see its corresponding tonal range highlighted in the image. You can then adjust the exposure and development in Silver Efex to ensure that important elements in your image fall within the desired zones. 
   
6. Fine-tune Exposure and Development: By understanding the Zone System and using the histogram’s visualization tools, you can fine-tune the exposure and development in Silver Efex to achieve a balanced and controlled black and white image with the desired tonal range. For example, if you want to make snow appear whiter (high contrast), you might place it in zone 8 or 9 by adjusting the exposure and development settings. If you want to emphasize shadows, you might place them in zone 3 or 4. 
   
7. The most important zones to pay attention to are Zone 0 and Zone 10 – the first is pure black, the second pure white. The practical reason to adjust these zones is that if you are printing, the first will be an impenetrable blob of black ink, the second will be no ink at all. Both will look weird, the second most obviously. You can then use either the basic controls or fine tune it with control points to eliminate the Zones 1 and 10.
   
8. Use Luminosity Masks: You can map the scope of the luminosity mask using the Zone system scale to select areas covered by one or more zones.

Remember that the Zone system is not an end in itself. You can choose the degrees of brightness and contrast to suit your own style and the requirements of the photograph. But as a guide, this is a mapping of the zones to “things” that appear in landscape photographs…

You can see from the table that you might by choice make Zone 7 into Zone 8 with local adjustment(s) and take Zone 6 towards Zone 5 in service of creating a higher contrast image. One thing to bear in mind is this – we don’t typically like to have pure black in an image, so by exposing for the highlights we can ensure that our shadow tones are preserved.

Software Links

If you want to explore Silver Efex, you can use the links here to get hold of a trial version or buy immediately.

Buy Silver Efex here

Try Silver Efex here

Further Reading: Black and White with Silver Efex