Black and White Photography Shadows and Light – the Secret of Tonality

For landscapes in black and white photography shadows and light, along with contrast, create tones, or tonality, and they all have huge effects on the mood of your photograph.

Of the critical black and white photography techniques, understanding the way colors translate into black and white tones is really important.

To make sure you are not disappointed with your black and white landscape photography, you need to get a good grasp of this concept called "tonality," and how to master it using shadows and light.

What is Tonality?

Think about a white ball on a white background and a circular piece of paper on the same background. If there is no directional lighting, there will be no shadows or highlights, and so there will be no visible difference in either object. There is no range of tones.

Add some light, create some shadows and the difference in the resulting tones is really visible. There is a reflection on the ball, some highlights, and of course, a shadow.

You can clearly see that the ball is three dimensional, while the cut out is flat. The new tones add more information and more range to the photo.

The range of shades of grey – the tones – have increased, resulting in a more dynamic photograph.

In the first photo below, there is a narrow range of tones. The next one has a full range of tones, from light to dark. And the last one is a low-key photo with very dark tones.




How does each photo "feel?" Light, heavy, mysterious? And this bring us to the next most important reason for mastering shadows and light.

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