Exercise-Strength of interpretation
After the last few exercises involving colour and black and white images this was an interesting piece of work to undertake. What I am looking at it how much alteration can a colour and black and white image take before they look wrong. If altered by the same amount will either image look better than the other? Will a black and white image accept more alteration than the colour image and still look acceptable?
Too much colour in an image would look false, can the same be said for too much black or white?
As I said in my previous exercise I think that black and white image can, in certain circumstance, be more powerful. As was previously stated you have to look for strong bold shapes to capture the eye if you are not relying on the colour,
My first image is the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan. Taken from the walkway below I captured the brick supports with the wires leading to it. I also waited for the stars and stripes flag to be in the best potion to see the detail. I didn’t want the left edge of the flag to be behind the support wires.
Image 1
We now have to make some alterations as you will see below, a strong increase and decrease in contrast for both the colour and the black and white images.
Image 2
Note:-
- Loss of detail in sky
- Loss of detail in wires and flag
- Bridge date missing
Image 3
Note:-
- Loss of detail in the bricks
- Bridge date missing
- main cables in centre of image too strong
- Side cables however look good.
How will the same images look in black and white?
Image 4
Image 5
I think that the black and white low contrast image (image 4) looks ok. The black and white contrast high image is not so good but in my view it looks better than the high contrast colour version.
As a further test I changed the original as shot colour image to black and white, here is the result. In reality you can not make a direct comparison due to the cropping, but I do like the black and white image. The brick word looks stronger and the cable ties stand out more.
Later with the help of a duplicate layer in PSE, I added a bit of colour to the US Flag, what do you think?
Image 6
Last Image
Conclusion
I think that I have shown by the results above that black and white image can take a little more “correction” than colour images. I also think that the previous statement that said you will need to rely more on shape than colour has also been proved.
It will be interesting to note viewers thought on the last image above especially as it breaks a “golden rule” Lets see what people think?