World Image Magazine Issue 31 April 2016 | Page 27

When we discuss greyscale and structures, it is easy to get drawn into the buildings trap, but there are other types of structure that lend themselves to this old form of photography. Before the 1930’s we only ever took black and white pictures, we called them soot and whitewash. As time passed and technical advancements were made, the advanced greyscale started to become available. This made images come to life, there are more than 50 shades of grey, more like 250. Now of course the graduated scale allows for many more intermediate shades and hence more stunning images. Technical advances have not remained static even with the advent of colour. The development of Infra-Red changed the way the world appeared. Instead of using light, true infra-red detects the heat radiated from objects and uses that to record the picture. In this format the warm areas appear light while cold areas are dark. Photographing in true infra-red requires a dedicated IR camera, or a new sensor in your camera and the IR filter. The normal sensor in your camera can not detect the range of heat, only light. Most infra-red images we see in circulation today are digital IR. These are representations of what should be there as a heat image. This is the reason that you expect something to be bright due to heat and it is dark or, because the software can not decide, is unchanged from the original greyscale. Even with digital IR the images can look stunning. Add to that the advent of HDR, and the scope for Greyscale has been opened. Now we enter a new era of black and white photography and no doubt technology will find something new for the future. Website = www.worldimagemag.com Page 27 email = [email protected]