Black-and-White Photography

Shooting, Processing & Printing

Photo: © Triccie Syquia

A 2-day workshop by Jun Miranda.

The deeper you go into photography, the more you will appreciate black-and-white. It has been called the Mother Medium, not just because it was the way photography began, but because it has maintained its preeminent status as an art form, sought-after by galleries and collectors.

It is also unique in all fields of art. No other art form captures reality literally and exactly, yet converts it to an abstraction.

In this class, Jun Miranda shows why now is the best time to practice black-and-white photography. The raw format, HDR editing, three color-channels, and grayscale inks allow infinitely more control over the black-and-white image than film and special developing techniques ever did.

As it was with film, the class involves the three critical steps of proper capture, controlled post-processing, and targeted output. Jun will cover both black-and-white and infrared conversion.

What is covered

• Understanding the principles
• What is lost and gained in a black-and-white print
• Good and bad black-and-white photographs
• Choosing your subject
• Previsualizing the end result
• Shooting
• Taking actual photographs for conversion
• Converting and editing
• Conversion and editing in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw
• How to use up to six (6) color contrast filters on one image to increase tonal separation between colors. Black-and-white film photographers could use only one contrast filter at a time, such as yellow or red for blue skies
• Imitating the look of infrared film by manipulating the color channels
• The Zone System in a digital world
• Identifying and “placing” tonal values (a la Zone System) to achieve wider latitude
• Printing
• Printing using grayscale inks

Who will benefit

• Photographers who want to explore this sublime art form
• Portrait and wedding photographers who want to offer this medium to their clients
• Black-and-white film photographers who want to discover the new tools for enjoying their craft
• Graphic artists who work with black-and-white photographs in their projects

Prerequisites

• Students must have attended the PCCI Basic Photography workshop or equivalent, or are familiar with the basic camera controls for exposure, focus, color, and compression.
• Familiarity with Lightroom is recommended but not required, as the specific steps in Lightroom are explained and demonstrated.

The instructor

Jun Miranda knows whereof he speaks. He studied digital photography and digital imaging in the U.S. in the early days of the technological wave, at a time when photographers were still absorbing new principles using metaphors from the film and darkroom school. Back in the Philippines, he was the first to apply what he learned by setting up a service bureau for digital imaging and printing and by establishing the first training center in digital photography and digital graphics.

At PCCI he teaches basic photography, Photoshop, and Lightroom. He was master photographer of the prestigious and challenging Camera Club of the Philippines, winning in both color and black-and-white categories.

He brings together all that experience and knowledge in this workshop, which takes the new tools to make a highly valued medium even more valuable.