Monochrome Monday From Atlanta's ATL

I haven't done much monochrome lately. It is a form of photography that I really love, and find it one of the most difficult to master. I have read countless books on the topic, the shading, dodge and burn, all from back in the film days, and it is all still relevant today. It just has a steeper learning curve than most other areas in photography (at least to me it does). For today, I decided to add to my weekly series updates and use Monochrome Monday to force myself back to developing my eye for monochrome.

Capturing in Camera

Post-processing into black and white can be daunting. Sure you can just hit the B&W button like I did below and boom, done. But that just doesn't usually create those deep shadows and blended grays the way I see it in my mind. It is just personal preference but if I'm shooting in monochrome I like to be more intentional about it. I want to shoot the image in the camera in monochrome.

For some images like the one above, that isn't a super realistic way to shoot. The image above was taken on my iPhone, and shooting monochrome on the iPhone, while possible, just isn't all that engaging to me.

Some of my gear, like my Nikon Zf, on the other hand deals with this in a fantastic way and has its own dedicated B&W switch. I think this is the first and only camera I have ever owned that had its own dedicated monochrome button, and it's fantastic. You can even setup the exact profile that corresponds to that button so you are shooting exactly the way you intend the image to come out. For me, that's more saturated blacks and deeper shadows.

Atlanta Airport

With that in mind, the images below were taken at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) and were taken in camera as monochrome images (although these were taken on my Sony a7iii, which I no longer own). I still did some work in post just like the film days of old did to ever single image, but they turned out much more as I had intended them to look without just hitting a B&W button in Lightroom.

I will say as far as monochrome goes, I like people in monochrome more than flowers, but if you take the time to learn how to see in monochrome any image tells a unique story in black and white. And even though people make the best subjects for monochrome, it's a challenging shoot to do this at the busiest airport in the world without bothering people. I do love photography at airports though. The full shoot for that day was fun and is at A Photo Day at Atlanta’s Hartsfield ATL Airport.

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