 Are you using bad light for black and white? Something to think about. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer. But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion. Come along on my journey to become the best black and white photographer I can be. Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures and hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is Bright in the Edge. Have you ever heard someone say, well, the light's not very good, so I'll just make it black and white. Or maybe you've said it yourself, well now, taking landscape photos. I have to confess, I probably have thought the same thing, especially when I first started getting into black and white pretty heavily. I even kind of entertain the idea that oh, I'm shooting black and white now. I could sleep in. I don't need to be there in the early morning when that golden light's going on. I don't care about the color. But it really didn't take me that long to realize that if I was only shooting in poor light, my black and white photos would just look like they were made in poor light. They wouldn't have the dynamic impact that good light brings to an image. And really, good light for color photography is also good light for black and white. The reasons for that is it's maybe not so much about the color when you're shooting black and white, but the angle of the light. In the morning and the evenings, lower points, it casts a nice angle light onto the scene, giving some beautiful shadows, bringing out the texture, adding drama and impact to your images. So if you are using black and white as a backup to color and you're only shooting your black and white images when the light is poor or flat or whatever, you'll end up with a bunch of black and white images made in poor light. They will lack the impact and the dynamic feel that you would get when the light is good for color photography as well. I recently just watched a video from one of my favorite YouTube photographers that does a lot on film, Steve Onions, and he made a really good point. He says that if you're going out to shoot black and white, you should be focusing on black and white. If you're trying to go out and do both, you're going to end up usually getting meteor shots for both. So he was making the point that if you're going to shoot color, you should focus on color, and if you're going to shoot black and white, you should focus on black and white. You might even want to set the back of your camera if you're shooting digital to show you black and white. And I would have to agree with that. I think my black and white photography has gotten much better since I've focused on just black and white when I go out with commitment of making black and white images. And so that frees you up when you go out in the early morning, when the light is at its peak for landscape photography, it frees you up to focus on the black and white image. You might approach this shot quite a bit different when you're shooting black and white. You may not be pointing the camera at things you might normally point at in the early mornings when you're shooting color. You may be using that light to add some nice shadow or detail on a subject. But you might be surprised at how good even shooting those typical shots that you would normally shoot in color, a lot of those really look pretty good in black and white as well. I would go as far as saying, look awesome in black and white as well. I was a little surprised by that when I started going to more black and white. There were very colorful sunsets left off. I might as well not bother taking the photo with that. But when you eliminate the color, you see something completely different. You see more of the lines and the shapes that the color distracts you from. So don't be afraid to shoot those shots you would normally shoot in color. Don't be afraid to try shooting those in black and white. Go out sometime and just shoot black and white. You might be surprised at what you bring home. It can be pretty exciting. Well, this is just a short topic video where I'm sharing my opinion and I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject as well. I'm hoping to do more of these in the future. Something that will be photography related. I've been wanting to do this for a while. I'm trying to separate the topic videos from my shoot videos. I tend to mix them up, intermingle a little bit too much and it takes my focus away from me. So when I'm out doing shoot videos it's going to be about the shoot and whether it's long or short. And the topic videos will be to the point about a subject, about a topic. Now these are only my opinions. I'd love to hear your opinions. I'd love to hear what you think about the subject we're talking about. And you can leave that in the comments down below. If you decide to go out for black and white photos go out when the light's good. Go out when you normally shoot color photos because that's when you're going to find the best black and white images as well. Hopefully I've given you something to think about. Until next time thanks for coming along for the ride.