Learning to see in black and white

I’ve just embarked on a course on Developing Your Mono Vision led by Simon Ellingworth.

Why? Because I really like the simplicity and degree of abstraction that black and white brings to a photograph. It is no coincidence that one of my photographic heroes is the great landscape photographer Ansel Adams.

But actually working out what might make a good black and white image is not straightforward when we see the world in ‘glorious technicolor’. So, I’ve come across a couple of tricks that might help train my eye for monochrome:

1. Using my smartphone: I have discovered that the Lightroom Camera app allows you to set the screen so that it displays in monochrome simply by choosing one of the two black and white presets that are available in the app. (As long as you are shooting in raw this  won’t affect the final image.)
2. Using my DSLR: The same thing can be done using Live View. On my Nikon, it is simply a matter of setting Picture Control to monochrome.