Black and White Live: Capture and Process
Black and white imagery has always had an aura of timelessness, drama and sophistication. Using this scheme at night is no different. Since photographers shooting in monochrome cannot lean on color to provide the drama in any given scene, we are forced to concentrate on other building blocks to evoke emotion, to tell a story or to capture the drama. This four-night online workshop will guide you on the journey through all of that and more.
Workshop Gallery
Workshop Details
March 25 & 27 and April 1 & 3, 2024 — Sold Out, Join Waitlist Below
This is a 4-night online course that runs on Mondays and Wednesdays for two consecutive weeks, each night from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT.
Skill level
Participants should have a firm grasp of the basic principles of photography and of their cameras, and have a comfortable understanding of night photography fundamentals.
Class size
12, with 2 instructors — 6:1 ratio
Instructors
Registration
Hoping to get a spot? Sign up below for our no-fee waitlist.
| • Session consists of four 2-hour classes: Monday and Wednesday, for two consecutive weeks. |
| • Full payment of $475 due upon registration. |
| • Tuition is non-refundable, but should you need to cancel, it may be applied toward a future online course. |
| • As a bonus, you will also receive 30 minutes of one-on-one time with an instructor. |
What You Will Learn
The goal of this workshop is to teach you the necessary skills to both capture and process fine black and white imagery.
This online class is designed in a way that optimizes your learning experience without you having to leave home. It’s a fun environment, but we’ll accomplish a lot. We’ll spend four evenings online together, learning Photoshop one step at a time, from the fundamentals and beyond, including some intermediate techniques to help you level up your photography.
Areas of focus:
learning how the eye sees
seeing in black and white
setting up your camera
capturing the image
color and its effect on black and white photography
what creates a great black and white image
understanding tonal contrast
using Lightroom to convert your color image to black and white
using Silver Efex Pro to convert your color image to black and white
using smart objects in Photoshop
local enhancements to create glowing images
and more!
What You Should Know
We want you to get the most out of your workshop experience. Struggling with computer skills while you are trying to learn new software is no fun. Please be sure you have the following fundamental skills before arriving:
basic computer navigation
downloading your images from your camera and storing them in folders on your computer
viewing your images after downloading them on your computer
using Lightroom at a comfortable level (for help, take our Lightroom Live course first)
You will also need the following:
a desktop or laptop loaded with the latest version of Photoshop (not Photoshop Elements, which is a stripped down version of the software); if you need to order Photoshop, click here to purchase and download the latest versions—you’ll want the Photography Plan, which currently costs $9.99 per month
a reliable internet connection
headphones and microphone (not mandatory, but may be useful)
While not necessary, we highly recommend the program Silver Efex Pro, part of the Nik Collection by DxO Labs. This is our top recommended solution for converting color digital images to black and white. Attendees will receive an exclusive coupon code to purchase the software at 15 percent off.
The course will take place online using Zoom. If you do not currently use Zoom, click this link to sign up for a free account and download the software.
If you have questions, please contact us—we're happy to talk it over with you.
The B&W Digital Evolution ...
“Digital black and white night photography is a very different experience, requiring a different set of skills and tools, but it is built upon the backbone of what came before.”
I spent the first 20 years of my photography career devising and perfecting a system for exposing, developing and printing black and white photographs shot at night. From the first roll of film I ever exposed, I was fascinated with the way that time could be altered or warped through long exposures. The process of working with black and white film was the ultimate creative tool to express and try to control that manipulation of time.
The biggest challenge was that the dynamic range of the film was usually considerably less than that of the scenes I photographed. I had to get enough exposure on the film to record detail in the shadows, without overexposing the highlights to the point where they would be unrecoverable in development. The next step was to process the film by varying the concentration, time, temperature and agitation of the developer to raise up the shadows and restrain the highlights of the negatives. Even with perfectly exposed and developed film, much of that process had to be repeated in the darkroom printing process, because of the limitations of the materials and the contrasty scenes of the nighttime world.
At more or less the exact moment when I finally felt like I had the process down, DSLRs were introduced and the photography world would never be the same.
Digital black and white night photography is a very different experience, requiring a different set of skills and tools, but it is built upon the backbone of what came before. In some ways it is more forgiving, as the technology has evolved over the last 20 years. Today’s sensors do a much better job of handling the scene contrast, and even when they can’t, we have tools such as HDR and layer blending to compensate.
I have enjoyed the challenges of starting over and relearning how to work with the new tools, but it’s definitely different. Back in the day, we learned to see the nighttime world in black and white, and craft our images that way in the field. We saw the world in shades of gray, something most photographers don’t do anymore.
