BASIC tips for taking better Black and White Photos.?

Answer 1

More of a technique, rather than a tip. When you are visualizing your subject and lighting, ignore colors.

Instead, try to see your subject and background as light and shadow. Look for strong lighting elements and some balance of dark. Avoid having your point of most interest as something dark with a dark background or something light with an equally light background. It will 'disappear' when coverted to black & white.

If you're shooting film, consider a yellow, orange, green, or red filter.
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I hope this is helpful for you.

Answer 2

With film you should use filters: Red, Green, Orange, Yellow, Blue.

Red will darken the sky and make clouds really "pop".

Red will "pass" its color while "blocking" greens. So if you photograph a red rose with a red filter the rose will be lighter and the foliage darker.

Photograph the same rose with a Green filter and the foliage will be lighter and the red rose darker.

A Yellow filter used for general photography will improve contrast. It will lighten anything yellow in your photograph and darken other colors.

The Orange filter adds a little more contrast.

If your film camera allows multiple exposures you can create some interesting effects. Check at AIRC-Adorama Imaging Resource Center and look for SFX Photography. Elinor Stecker-Orel has a series on multiple exposures in-camera and how to approximate them in Photoshop for digital users.

Answer 3

It could be a sepia tone. You can get this effect in Photoshop using filters. this can also be achieved using Image-> Adjustment-> Hue Saturation and changing the levels to get the kind of color you want. Checkbox the colorize option. Now for the second one, the rose, to get that affect you will need to adjust your aperature and zoom all the way out to get a narrow depth of field so you focus on the rose and blur out the background. On most point and click cameras there is a macro setting that does this for you. sometimes a super macro to. you set the camera to this setting then move the camera close to the object to focus on it and the back will get blurred. have fun