The document discusses the art of black and white photography and how it is found not only through the eye of the photographer but also through the skills and techniques used in developing the print. It states that for many photographers, the darkroom, whether physical or digital, serves the same purpose as a painter's canvas or a printmaker's plate. It encourages photographers to edit photos using dedicated software rather than a camera's built-in black and white settings in order to retain more color information and creative control.

3. 
Many artists considers the "Art" of
traditional black and white
photography to be found not only in
the eye of the photographer but in
the compilation of producing the
expressive black and white print
through the use of their
skills, techniques, and tools found
in the darkroom, or in our case the
digital darkroom. For many, the
darkroom, whether actual or
digital, is the same as the canvas
and brush are to the painter or the
plate and the acid to the printmaker.

5. 

Your camera software
To start with your camera though. It
probably came with some photo editing
software. You might have your own
software – perhaps Photoshop, Photo
Impact, Photo Studio – or any one of a
dozen or so programs that have "photo"
somewhere in the title!
Any of these will do a better job at
black and white digital photography than
your camera will.

7. 
Think of it this way – your camera
is specially designed to capture
photographs. Your software is
specially designed to edit
photographs. Don't ask your camera
to do a job that your software is
designed to do – it's not what it
was made for!

9. 

And now for the science bit!
To explain in a little more detail:
Light is made up of many colors - think
back to rainbows, prisms and "Richard Of
York Gave Battle In Vain" at school.
NB: for the interested, the first letter
of each word in the Richard . . . phrase
represents the colors of the rainbow in
order. R =
red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo,
Violet.
When you capture an image with your
digital camera the lens focuses light
onto the image sensor.

11. 
The sensor is made up of millions of light
sensitive dots. These are called
“photosites” - just think of them as
individual dots.
Your sensor records three types of light –
red, green and blue (RGB). It records the
strength of each of these from a scale of
000-255.
So, a photo site might have a reading of:
Red – 212
Green – 028
Blue – 056
The strength of each color is combined to
get an overall color for that dot. In this
case, because red is the strongest
color, this will give us a reddish colored
dot.
NB: If all three were 000 that would be pure
black, and if they were all 255 the result
would be pure white

13. 


And the math part . . .
Now, think about all the information you have
there. Three colors, with 256 possible strengths
of color.
256 x 256 x 256 = 16,777,216

Wow! Each dot can represent any one of over 16
million colors. That's a lot of colors!
So what happens of you set your camera to black
and white digital photography mode? It throws
away all of those colors and simply records the
strength of light at that pixel – on a scale of
000 – 256.
on.

15. 
000 = pure black
255 = pure white
anything in the middle is grey.
This is the main reason why I implore
you to not set your camera to black
and white mode.
If you do you are asking your digital
camera, that is capable of recording
any one of over 16 million
combinations to choose from just 256
of them. You're basically throwing
away information that you might just
need later on.

17. 
Still not convinced?

More reasons? You may well decide
later on that, actually, that picture
might look better in color.
If your camera never recorded the
color information when it took the
photograph (i.e. it was set to black
and white digital photography mode)
you can't put the information back
later on. It's gone for good.

19. 
If you decide to go for a black and
white photograph anyway, then your
software is more than capable of
throwing away that information. At
least you'll have the choice.
But wait! There's more. Even if you
have taken your full color snap and
decided that it suits black and white
digital photography, tread
carefully.
There are ways to make your black and
white digital photography really
stand out, and then there's
grayscale.

21. 
To create top quality black and
white digital photos you need to
use your photo editing software
with a little care. I use the
channel mixer function in Photoshop
as well as other programs.

23. 
For our next class I want you to find three
black & white photos that impress you and
upload them to our wiki page along with
reasons why you chose these images