BASIC COLOUR THEORY FOR BLACK AND WHITE IMAGES

Welcome back to my blog, this week I am touching on black and white photography to give you a few pointers when undertaking this type of photo shoot.

Below is a good scale of how colours look in black and white. If you compare this to the coloured wheel, you can see that green to purple are the best shades to use for black and white images as they show up the darkest. If you are doing a beauty photo shoot starting with colour and would like to take a black and white image at the end of the shoot, you can work it so you use colours first off for the colour shots, but can also use this same makeup for the black and white image, knowing it will still show up well on camera.

Always ask the photographer to show you the images zoomed in on camera so you are able to see if more contour/shading or eye makeup needs adding for your black and white image.

If creating a black and white beauty shot like my image below, you must use more black eye make up (IF DOING A BLACK AND WHITE SHOOT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO USE COLOUR PRODUCTS), and more contouring products to enable this to clearly show in the black and white image. It all depends on the lighting the photographer will use, as well to how the shadows appear in black and white images, so it is worthwhile discussing this before the shoot so you are able to plan your looks around this. See the black and white image below, a similar one is also in colour next to it but you can still clearly see the makeup in black and white as I used blues/purples and black tones.

Have fun creating your black and white photography images, please do pop over to the makeup hub on Facebook, to join me and many other makeup enthusiasts.

Sarah x