I started my photography back in 1959, while serving in the army. A room mate wanted to start a studio when he got discharged and he helped me pick out my first camera. After my own discharge, I ended up working in mechanical engineering during the day and shooting for a weekly on my weekends. I would buy 100 ft rolls of tri-x and then develop the film after shooting high school sports. I never shot color as it cost to much. Today, I shoot with FujiFilm XT-20 set to raw/fine with the jpeg always set to black and white. I learned to see in B&W.

Still can't beat a roll of B&W film! Playing in the darkroom is much more fun than sitting in front of a computer.

Thanks for the video. I especially liked the jazz with the 5/4-time signature at the beginning of your video. I shot medium format black & white for 15 years. I shot 35mm black & white for a newspaper for about five years. I shot large format black & white for a photographic reproduction studio for one year. I started shooting color negative film when I worked for a wedding/portrait studio. I started shooting color transparency film when I started working for a medical college. I developed my transparency film and my black & white film. I also printed my black & white film. Today, I still shoot and develop my small, medium, and large format black & white film. Today, I also use my Fuji X-Pro2 mirrorless digital to capture black & white images. Two of my seven custom settings are for black & white. Your custom setting @13:10 is very similar to the one I use. My second black & white custom setting is for infrared black & white.

Jazz, B&W, fantisic images and your delivery and knowledge is just sublime. Thank you good sir 👍🏿

Craig, I see you as 'BBC Roberts' as your videos always inform, educate and entertain - bravo. I think a lot of photographers probably make a similar transition to the one you describe here: initially seduced by bold, saturated colours and later recognising the appeal of form, shape and contrast with black and white. Also, you get an extra few hours in bed once you stop chasing colourful sunrises and instead wait for the shadows. Thanks for continuing your output on YT when your main business lies elsewhere; it is still a highlight for aspiring photographers.

I shoot black and white and love it. Whether it’s on film or digital, black and white conveys a story that color cannot.

Craig…another excellent video. Bravo! 👏👏👏🏆

Top stuff and a mighty interesting audio track too 👍

Excellent advice, I loved the Jazz intro music the first few minutes, I believe I would rank this one of your best videos! Great images!

Your experience and knowledge shines through in this excellent video. Thank you

Great video! Simple to understand and with informative insights. Thanks for sharing.

CONFESSION: I don't know that I've ever looked through my viewfinder and thought "This is an ideal scene for black and white". After watching this video, this IS a confession and not a boast. Every now and then I watch a KZfaq photography video and realise how lacking in breadth my approach to my hobby is. This is such a video. Thanks, Craig for once again changing my outlook and providing examples of B & W photos I can strive to emulate. Cheers from DownUnder 🦘

Yes Craig. Spot on advice.

Thank you for this video. I start shooting in black and white and your advices are greatly appreciated. ❤❤❤

I’ve recently started taking more black and white photos. After watching your videos on urban city photography it really inspired me to challenge my self. I how set my self a task to get of the Isle of Wight more and visit more cities 👍

Great pictures!

Great video, as Ive been going back to exploring B&W images.

Craig, you are the best advocate of “photography” in its entirety. Your personal journey and development speak for themselves and the results are again and again mesmerizing. Seeing the beauty in other things - what a gift. I love my (yes, here it comes) Oly Pen F B&W jpgs. Sadly I lack the opportunity to use it like that as often as I would like to. And, you deliver your very profound thoughts so smoothly and elaborate, one wonders how many takes you need 😉 Great Work 👍

Hi Craig, I never really thought of Black and White as seeing the world in a different way, great point. Great photos Craig as always, nice Shadows. Nice Album Cover. Thanks for this video. 😊

Loop-watched the intro 3 times just for that delicious jazz ! :)

I like that you made ⅕ of this video as an intro, it feels comfy and hooked my attention. For black and white, I have my interest in false colour conversion, lately. It gives me a different grey or an unique transition. I like my bw photos "foamy" or the opposite, strong and sharp. I wish I have more time to try low-key and high-key in bw, though.

Great video (again) 😊 that motivates me to endeavor B&W more. Previously, I associated B&W mostly with today's (mediocre) street photography, where B&W is mostly just used as an artsy-fartsy 'filter' without actually adding much to a scene's value. All good and impactful street photography has been in colour, since colour films were around, thinking e.g. of Martin Parr and his league. But for architecture, like in your examples, B&W works really well, if one is blessed (or trained) with an eye for when B&W works 👍

Great video. I shot the same locations in Halifax (just down the road from me in Bradford) last autumn and almost all my shots were black and white. I kept meaning to go back on a foggy night but never got round to it.

Craig, great content as always. I like you started photography using transparency film. However, I must say I never liked the saturated look of the Fuji films and always shot Kodachrome or Ektachrome. Today light and subject matter determine whether I shoot monochrome, colour or partial colour. It is only in the last 10 years I have taken to black and white and I now shoot more black and white than colour. Partial colour is where it gets interesting. People talk about the how much they like the colours straight out of camera of a particular brand, but in my experience the default colours out of camera for all the brands has never been great. The manufacturers love to push a more saturated look, a bit like the Fuji films of old. This led me to play around with colours in camera. If I shoot full colour, I set the camera to the muted colour option and pull the saturation right back and only then does it start to approximate something I am happy with. My experimentation also led me to play around with the partial colour modes in my Olympus (OM Systems) cameras and this has been revelation. I could control the parts of the colour spectrum I want to emphasise, or even remove altogether, and this has changed my approach in the field where I now constantly switch between picture modes depending on the conditions and subject matter.

I have a custom preset for monochrome on my EM1 MkII Olympus - the viewfinder shows the scene in monochrome, helping me to think in monochrome. The jpg is monochrome and the raw file has all the colour data. I shoot mostly B&W film, partly due to the cost of colour film and the fact I don't yet develop colour at home so developing costs play a part. Especially in 4x5.

Hello Craig, I’m a new subscriber. I’ve found yr vids just in time as I’m going to spend the day in Leeds on Wednesday shooting black n white only. Having just watched two of videos has helped a lot as I’m still an amateur’s amateur if you see what I mean. I have been shooting b/w here and there but without dedication to it, swapping between that and colour but in Leeds, it will be full commitment helped with some written notes from yr videos…Thanks.

Purchased your ebook, thanks for the great content.

Well I always thought you had great taste. Now it’s confirmed with the display of a fabulous album by my most favouritist band ever. 👍 Regards, Dazza. 🇬🇧

Enjoyed the vlog and seeing your work, especially the intro. I would just have loved the images to have stayed on screen just a touch longer to fully appreciate them ;) I fell in love with B&W in the 80's watching my dad develop and print in his darkroom in the loft. Fast forward 40 years and I just got myself a Q2 Monochrom to push my love for B&W further. I now shoot 90% B&W anyway and having the Q2M is a dream come true for that.

Great video. I use mft cameras. all set to jpeg large in B/W, with different filter settings. All to get it as I see it.

Wonderful photos. An thank you for the quick B&W primer! So much for me to learn. I'm not a professional photographer, just an enthusiast enjoying the hobby with my old Pentax K-5II. Hey have you thought about trying the Pentax K-3 III Monochrome camera? It would cost a heck of a lot less than a Leica, lenses included.

You're right about seeing in BW and taking the decision in camera. I still shoot most BW on film and develop myself, whereas for colour I changed to digital in 2005. Although I did shoot slides too between 2005-2008 because results of the lab were better than with colour negative film. Those bad lab results pushed me into digital, as well as the birth of our kids.

I shot Panatomic-X and then processed it into positive images for projection onto a screen

"Hi Craig informative vid as usual, I love b/w (light, form, mood) thats the hook for my photogtaphy. my children love taking colour images on their phones, and very rarely press the mono button! I think as ypu mature in your photography b/w becomes a beautiful alternative to convey mood, and storytelling images ,which they will discover as their photo journey continues! ps, have you a music review site Im missing🙂 cheers."

Hi Craig, I do lanscape photography in colors but today the b/w it's attracting me a lot. I have a great dude photographing landscape in b/w. The dark could be totally dark or I must show details?

what camera are you using?

Gretchen 🙂

Great advice! And great seeing some YT videos from you. Edit: and I made that comment to early in the video 😅 Life lesson watch the whole video before commenging But a warning is in place, if you start shooting BnW, you might start browsing for a Leica Monochrom. And that means morgage your house, again... ;)

"Gretchen Goes to Nebraska" 👍 🎸🎶

Great video, awesome photos all around. Nice treatment of the topic and many good points. Typical of your work. However... You didn't say the other magic word: TEXTURE. I think B&W is particularly well suited to underscore the texture of the subjects, and you left that out. (Particularly funny in that your shirt, while nicely matched to the topic, also featured lots of pleasing visible texture.)

Pentax K3 monochrome. You'll never look back

Fuji and Ricoh are missing a huge market for a stripped down b&W version of their cameras

Hello Craig Speaking as an avid amateur photographer I absolutely love and gel with shooting black and white. I go out 99% of the time with my Fuji set to Acros R and I capture jpeg and raw, normally editing the raw version to polish the best images. In my journey of shooting BnW i noticed that I have 2 cameras that excel at it. Both quite old with approx 8mp sensors, and it dawned on me that it might be their lack of dynamic range, hence sooc photos having more black and more white straight out of the gate. I spent a lot of time being disappointed with my Fuji XT3 BnW images but understanding the camera more, my lenses more, dynamic range and my editing techniques I can achieve some great results. The problems I use to experience were that images were too dynamic hence an overall greyish feel. Also... the music in the first section.... so very similar to the sounds of Dave Brubeck - Take Five ??

tiffs... TIFFs... *TIFFS* . What???

First here 😊

Digital is too easy and boring.

it isn't often one can encounter a kindred soul but I continue to feel a warm comfort of shared vision with you thoughts and work, and at 72 years of age, I hope to grow up as wise as you. thank you