 To help you create amazing, gorgeous black and white images, it's time to turn to the master of the art, the very famous photographer Ansel Adams. How's it? How's it? I think it's fair to say most people with even just the passing interest in photography either know the name Ansel Adams or have seen one of his wonderful black and white landscapes at some point in their lives. There is a reason he is so famous and that is because these images are so beautiful, so powerful, so sumptuous and there is actually a fairly simple way of getting this into your own black and white photography because in addition to being a wonderful photographer Ansel Adams was also a very generous person with his knowledge. He wanted people to be able to replicate what he was doing so he wrote a number of books about his approach to black and white photography and they're called The Camera, The Negative and The Print. And what we're going to do today is actually do them in reverse because as far as I'm concerned it's the end result that we're really interested in. It's the print isn't it? The final image although final is actually a bit of a misnomer there as we're going to see fairly shortly. So if we know the destination then it makes the rest of the journey easier. So that gorgeous print that you want to loving your frame and put on to the wall for everybody to admire isn't just simply a color photo that's had a desaturation applied to it. No, great black and white photographs are a rich range of tones. When you look at the work of Ansel Adams you can see this in action that it's not just contrasty punchy images or images that are smooth tones. They have a variety to them that they use these ideas when they are needed. You understand when they're needed when we get to the process of actually visualizing the image but to know at the end where you want to be is so important with black and white photography because the steps that you take when you have the camera in your hand are setting you up for success here in the dark room. In the modern world there's a tendency and I'm certainly guilty of this as well to take a photograph to do whatever is that we want to do to it and then we'll never really come back to it ever again but just take a moment and listen to what Ansel himself has to say about this. Over there the three prints are from the same negative aren't they? This is probably by my first visualization I chose a filter especially for the dramatic effect of the sky so I began to see as a dark heavy sky and intense shadows and so it was made in 1927 and this is the first print which is about 54 years old and the big one the end was made here at about uh oh 1962 or three and this center one is about maybe five years old so it's a case of different performances of the of the same maybe but all three of them have totally different emotional qualities haven't they? Well if I were pianist and were giving a concert I probably would play a particular piece very differently in February than I did in June I'd say so or at least with 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 something years difference you would have a different feeling. I love that idea this thing of like you know that it is you know the photograph that we make is a piece of music and we can revisit it again and again and of course when you do that you are practicing your dark room skills either digital dark room or traditional wet dark room things like dodging so that's when you hold back part of a print so you bring out say details in the shadows and burning in this is when you're letting more light hit onto the the print and bringing you more little bits of detail these are two very simple ideas but they alone will make your black and white prints so much more richer because you are starting to add a little bit of interest to the image rather than just being a blanket that you've kind of draped over the whole thing that's why Ansel Adams's prints have stayed in the public consciousness because they have this ebb and flow to them and start bringing that into your own images at photo school we were told that you can't make a good print from a bad negative although as I discovered it is quite easy to make a bad print from a good negative so how do you make these good negatives well there's a lot of talk about you know getting things right in the camera and what kind of stuff and think about what you're doing with black and white photography as making a base for you to then have all the detail that you want to make that wonderful sumptuous print that we were talking about earlier to help you with this of course Ansel has a system doesn't he right and that's called the zone system very simply because if you're familiar with the zone system you don't really want to go over it again even if you're not familiar with it I also don't want to overwhelm you with too much but simply put it's broken down it's shades of gray from zone zero and whatever that is on the page right which is paper white through to the zone 10 which is inky blackness and then sort of shades of gray in between right and this is one of the reasons why you see these flat lifeless black and white prints is because they are mostly having their tones in that middle area that zone five area so they don't have any light and shade or you know rich and you know sort of well that's kind of the other terms that I can't really think about right but this is what you are going to have in your images the easiest way to sort of get to this place of having a good range of data in your image if you want to call it that is to yes shoot raw especially if you are new to photography because at least then the camera's not making some decisions about what it is it's going to to keep in terms of the the information and to have what's what I would call an even exposure so that can be done very simply by not relying on your camera meter which can be thrown off by various things like snow for example if you photograph snow with your meter and you know your camera and it's come back looking well gray that's because your camera meter is trying to make everything great which is what it's supposed to do so the way to get around this is to either have a gray card which you then take a reading from and I'll link to these in the description box below or if you want to look really fancy an incident light meter this is one of these handheld light meters that people sort of wave around and get readings from right those are going to give you a nice average exposure from which you can start exploring the tones and if you are interested in exploring a bit more about you know the zone system in more depth I do have a series every Wednesday called you know the five minute photo school where we kind of touch on these more technical aspects you know each week and and build up a a depository of knowledge for you to help grow as a photographer now we talk about the camera the camera to be used for black and white photography that's the title of the book surely it will all be about the types of cameras and of course nothing can be further from the truth the camera is simply a tool it is something that holds what in Ansel Adams's case was the film right and in your case is the sensor and puts light onto it in various different ways and it's your job to think about black and white photography to visualize the image so many of these images that have been up on screen of of Ansel's and other great photographers anybody who does really good black and white work you'll look at it and go aha okay so they are thinking first and foremost how the scene will look in black and white and now do you understand why we were at the beginning thinking about the end product because if you don't know what the end product is going to look like then it makes the beginning so much harder you can't just go around snapping whatever you want right in the in the off chance that it's going to look kind of cool black and white this is why you get this people can ah you know I can't decide what the color or black and white you know that's it's because I haven't given it some thought they haven't visualized or pre-visualized the image so the next time that you are out and about with your camera and you're thinking about photographing black and white specifically right think about the zones right once you have gone through some of the processes one with that you know testing out how different things look and doing a bit of dodging and burning as well you're going to get an and inherent feel for that richness of a wonderful black and white print which is a what I want to see them I want to see those beautiful prints because I love I love a great black and white print so when you look around you out there right right now outside my windows there's some green trees they're vibrant against the blue of the sky there's some of those wonderful clouds are like quite billowy and have that gray part underneath now a lot of people might look at one there's some nice colors but think about how that scene is going to look in black and white right and so Adams he knew that if you put on a red filter or an orange filter with black and white film that it makes blues darker you may have seen these things in lightroom you know like a red filter or a blue filter and how it changes the image but this is what he was doing with actual filters in front of the lenses and I know that if I right now that sky is fairly blue that if I put a red filter on it it'll make that sky black how dramatic would that look against the white clouds with just their little bit underneath it as you go and you look at photography black and white photography think about how that scene would look in color and then how it's been transformed into this insanely great image through the application of pre-visualizing what the tones are going to look like understanding how to record those tones on on the film and then being able to tease them out into the print and then in the print using a phrasal I can't stand but it seems appropriate in this in the sense massaging the image to make it something so much more than just simply a muddy flat gray puddle of tones a photographer who I absolutely adore who also creates spectacular black and white prints that are simply epic is Sebastia Salgado and I would suggest you go and look at his work as well and try to figure out why black and white is so successful in his images thank you ever so much for watching and I'll see you again soon