Tip #21: Try Black and White

Ubiquitous Iguana iguana - Selva Verde, Costa Rica
Canon 7D + 300 f2.8L IS @ f4.0

There was a time when a photographer had to choose between black and white or color prior to the shoot. As travel/nature photographers, our default plan was to load the bodies with chrome film and shoot for color. While the film bodies of the 80’s and 90’s were amazingly rugged, they could be painfully inflexible. Forced to shoot the entire roll or forfeit multiple images at a cost, black and white was little more than an afterthought. 

Enter the digital era... We millennial photographers are now like painters with an infinite palate. Regardless of the software you love or love to hate, you can now make any image monochromatic, dichromatic or polychromatic. The “new” post-processing options are so vast, that we are only limited by our imagination. More than ever I am thinking like a black and white photographer. I am looking more closely at form, tone and pattern prior to squeezing the shutter.

Tip #21: Put on those Monochromatic Glasses and See it in Black and White

Fulgora lanternaria (aka: Peanut-head) - Selva Verde, Costa Rica
Canon 5D markII + 180 f3.5L Macro

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