Wednesday - May 5th

I subscribe to a newsletter called BetterPhoto.com, through that I had the opportunity to review Harold Davis' new book called "Creative Black and White".

I couldn’t wait to open up my copy of Harold Davis’ book, “Creative Black and White”. At first glance I thought this book was going to enable me to convert color photos into Black and White, but know when I’m taking the photo the settings I choose will make it a ‘great’ Black & White. This is not a medium I had any appreciation for before I read this book.

In the Introduction; “My goal in Creative Black & White is to be your companion. . . Together we’ll experience what it means to think in black and white. I’ll show you many of the visual ideas that can work well with black and white, and share my expertise and the technical approaches that can be used to create high quality digital black and white photos.” Boy did he deliver! Throughout the book he gave example after example of Black & White photos and showed us the settings in the camera he took of those photos to achieve the desired result.

I’m a dentist by trade and consider myself an ‘Advanced Hobbyist Amateur’. I’m the president of the local photography club; even write a daily blog for the club. I submit photos on a monthly basis and take photos for different organizations around town, but never thought about Black & White as a medium that was ‘artistic’ in my hands. “Creative Black and White” teaches the basics behind any good photograph, i.e. Contrast, Shape & Form. . . Shades of Gray. Check out the ‘Contents’ page and see how complete Harold covers the subject of Black & White and how simply he teaches you how you can do it.

He teaches how to convert color photos to Black & White using multiple techniques; Camera Raw, Photoshop, Lightroom and different Photoshop Plugins. He gives us many ways to achieve the desired result; he’s not married to one particular method.

I’m anxious to try my hand at Black & White Photography. “Creative Black and White” has given me the confidence to expand my knowledge base on what subjects make great Black & White opportunities, how to properly ‘step by step’ convert from color to Black & White and also shows ‘before and after’ examples.

This book is the complete ‘how to’ book for those of us that had NO idea that Black & White photos had so much promise. I highly recommend this book and can’t wait to use it at our teaching sessions at the photography club. This will be a great opportunity for us as a club to try our hand at a subject only one or two have ever used.