Hello friends!
Welcome back to WildKnife Photography’s weekly photo story.
This is part one of a two part story on shooting wildlife in black and white.
Wildlife photos are usually in colour and most of the shots I take I process that way. Wildlife and landscapes are often rendered in colour because of the natural beauty and wonder of the scenes we attempt to capture. Ansel Adams was a notable exception to the colour landscape shooter and his black and white images of American National Parks such as Yosemite and Yellowstone are some of the most iconic images of American landscapes.
Wildlife images often strive to capture an animal in its natural habitat and the landscape can become an integral part of the image. Encountering an animal in the wild is an exhilarating experience. It can get your adrenaline pumping and make you really feel alive so it’s no wonder we so often choose to display our encounters in colour. Such life is brought to images of animals and landscapes with rich vibrant colour!
So why on earth would we ever choose to strip that away and shoot animals in black and white?
For me, the winter provides a stark often colourless canvas when shooting in the flat light of a cloudy winter day. Trying to squeeze out some colour in post-processing a white ptarmigan against the snowy backdrop of a subarctic winter can make my images feel contrived and forced instead of reflecting the delicate subtleness of subarctic light.
Winter is a great time to explore black and white wildlife photography particularly with high contrast subject matter like frosty ravens or white ptarmigans among the dark branches of a willow bush. Black and white images can help focus the on the subject using contrast when the subject is the lightest or darkest spot in the photo.
We’ll be taking a bit of a break next week so look for the conclusion to be posted December 31. Part two of this exploration will look at other ways black and white photos can add drama to an image by stripping away the colour and leaving you with the just the bones of a story.
Enjoy your holiday and we’ll catch up shortly for the last post of the year!