thinking about a black and white portrait session?

There’s a feel to a black and white portrait that is uniquely its own

There’s no denying black and white portraits are timeless

Black and white photography began when, in 1826, the French scientist Joseph Nicéphore took the world’s first photograph out the window of his family home. His discovery would change the world. Black and white portraits are classic. When color is stripped out of an image the viewer is less distracted by the hues and pattern in clothing and surroundings which means attention naturally falls on the people photographed.

It’s not the norm to have a family request their entire session be done in black and white

Many families prefer color but sometimes I get a request for an entire session to be done in black and white and I love when it happens.

Every photograph I take is shot in the RAW file format which means there is nothing applied to the image file by the camera—no saturation, no compression, no sharpness. It comes out of the camera and goes onto my computer exactly as it was taken. It’s a very high quality file and it acts like a digital negative which means I have great flexibility to alter it in post-processing (the magic stuff I do at my computer).

Turning an image to black and white doesn’t happen until I get to the computer

The other interesting thing about RAW files with the cameras I use is that they’re always in color! Turning an image to black and white doesn’t happen until I get to the computer for editing and retouching. So even if you ask for a black and white portrait session you’re actually being photographed in color and if you ask to see the back of my camera during your session you’ll see your images in color.

Any image can be processed in color or black and white

Because RAW files are captured in color they can stay color in editing or they can be converted to black and white. Often I’ll include a few black and white images along with color in my client galleries.

I began photographing when I was eleven years old and I’ve never stopped. My earliest images were all made in black and white before I moved to color in my early teens. I returned to black and white in my mid-teens when I was gifted a darkroom by my parents and was photographing for my high school newspaper and yearbook. Black and white negatives were easy to process and prints could be made with a minimum of fuss, unlike color which required rigid attention to temperatures which my darkroom was not able to accommodate.

All my early client work was photographed on black and white film. I processed the negatives and printed the photographs in my basement darkroom. When I began photographing at high volume it became very obvious that continuing with film would not be feasible. I switched to a completely digital workflow in 2004; prior to that I spent two years teaching myself digital photography using point and shoot digital cameras. These point and shoots were great for their time but not high enough resolution for client work. What they DID do very well was allow me to get to grips with learning the computer and editing in Photoshop and eventually Lightroom to get my look in both black and white and color.

I worked hard to get a digital black and white that could rival my traditional black and white photographic prints

One area of primary interest when I was learning my digital workflow was getting a black and white print out of my digital files that could hold its own against my black and white film photographs. It took time and loads of trial and error but I eventually got there. My black and white digital photographs have won awards, been shown in galleries, and featured in printed publications.

The black and white conversion that I use when editing client images is the same process I’ve used since 2005. It’s a clean, bright conversion with just a hint of warm tone and the files print beautifully.

Interested in a black and white session? Just ask.

If you’re interested in a black and white portrait session just ask. And if you’re not sure you want to go all in on black and white you don't have to—RAW files can be either or.