Blending the Rules of Black & White Photography
I’m telling you I’m hopeless. Pete has zero chance of getting a guest post from me. Zero. Zilch. Nada. It will never happen!
I did it again! I started what I intended to be a guest post. Finished it up and was getting ready to send it to Pete. Then, I realized… my image wasn’t taken with my camera phone! Disqualified again. Well, rather than waste the post, here it is! As you can see, I bent the rules again. Pete invited me to send a grayscale image, so that was my starting point, but I did bend the rules! Of course, since it’s not a camera phone image, that’s breaking the rules…
Black and white photography can be great, revealing details and textures you might not pick up on in a color photograph. But, sometimes you might want to add just a little bit more punch to them to add interest or even special effects to achieve things a little more fantastical. When you’re dealing with digital photographs, there are no rules anymore as to what you can do with them!
Let’s start with the original photograph, taken in color.
First, choose the Elliptical Marquee tool and draw a circle around the firefly’s abdomen (the end that glows). You want to go larger than the actual tip, as you’re going to be creating a fantasy glow effect.
After you have your selection circled, set a Feather effect (Select > Modify > Feather). I used 50 pixels, but your selection may vary. For best results, experiment!
Now, make an inverse selection (Select > Inverse).
Finally, desaturate to remove the color. For my image, I removed all the color to have a grayscale image in the non-selected area. Maybe you’ll want to do the same, or leave some color in.
Here is my completed image:
Imagine a firefly that lives in a black and white world. In her world, her glow brings color. Maybe in your little world, you can do the opposite, where the firefly’s glow removes color. It all depends on what your imagination can come up with! If you want to take things a step further, you could even animate your creation, as I’ve done below. The possibilities are endless!
Those are great black and white images. Good black and white can be hard to do. I like your example of putting a little color into the image. It reminds me of the movie “Pleasantville”, a film I really like.
Now *that* is cool. I love the idea of a firefly lighting up a colorless world. That’s a good basis for some weird writing.
And you still have until infinity to submit a photo. Next week, though, is Sepia Week, so if you can’t get a grayscale photo in by Saturday night, get a sepia one ready for next week.
I love doing photo edits and image manipulation. Fun stuff here!
Thanks for stopping by but Ginger says to tell you she ‘never’ puts her nose anywhere near Woody K.’s behind!
Very cool idea — especially if viewed in a Disney-Pixar kind of way.
I think I like the original B&W image as well as any of them though. It makes you pay attention, or you miss the fact that there’s a firefly there at all.
WOW… That is something else. I’d ask how you did that but it is probably a secret.