The Photographer's Black and White Handbook: Making and Processing Stunning Digital Black and White Photos

This is another excellent book by Harold Davis. Very informative and full of beautiful examples and how they were processed. Harold is an excellent teacher and photographer who has a lot of wisdom to share!

If you are interested in creating black and white images or improving and expanding your skills in this area, Harold Davis’ The Photographer’s Black & White Handbook is a must read.The first thing I did when I picked up this book was check out the Table of Content. The first three chapters will lead you through pre-visualization, seeing in black and white and composing your images. The third chapter discusses converting your images to black and white. Harold Davis talks about jpeg versus raw and effort versus quality. The last two chapters dive into processing your images by extending the tonal range and applying various creative black and white effects. He illustrates different programs and methods using numerous examples and screen shots which I found very helpful.This book is easy to follow and understand. I especially appreciated the first couple of chapters where he walks you through workflow and various elements which are necessary for your black and white images to have visual impact and tell a compelling story.All along the way, the book is filled with incredible and inspirational images. Harold Davis gives a personal touch by his storytelling of the background and locations of each image along with the metadata (aperture, shutter speed, focal length) and software used in processing. Take time to study the images and try to understand what Harold Davis saw and felt before he snapped the shutter or even set up his tripod. I was surprised by what I learned.I highly recommend The Photographer’s Black & White Handbook to anyone interested in not only black and white photography, but photography in general. Much of the information can be applied to all photography. This book will make a great gift to yourself, as well as for that photographer (or wannabe photographer) in your life.

It's hard to go wrong with one of Harold Davis's books. I saw a couple of bad reviews that set me back since this is the third Davis book I've gotten but I'm glad I ignored them. I think the author knows that B&W is very subjective. I myself have spent hours fine tuning a B&W image only to have someone find it wasn't a pleasing image to them. Harold presents many ideas that leave me wondering how I can use them in my own works and since I buy the Kindle edition it is quite frankly worth every penny of the $14. Harold does tell some stories and so should the images you make with his advice.

I enjoyed the harmony of this book in terms of its descriptions of the locales and what inspired the author to make the black-and-white photos. It is a pleasant combination for learning the interpretive nature of this form of photography.

Harold Davis is one of my favorite photography authors, as well as a favorite photographer. This is the 4th book Ive purchased by him. Reason being, he is intricately detailed in his explanations, but not to the point it is over my head. This book is fantastic, because he goes into detail about what to look for when choosing to make a black & white photo. His photos are inspiring, his words are clear, engaging and encouraging. I'd recommend this book to anyone who is even curious about black & white photography. I would say this book is a must-have for any photographer, especially those interested in landscape and architecture photography.

This is a decent overview of the basics on how to produce black-and-white digital images. Where it falls down is that it rarely explains why you would want to use some techniques over others, and what their relative advantages and drawbacks are. And it spends a lot of time going over very advanced tools, like HDR and multi-RAW processing, that only a tiny minority of readers are likely to investigate. To top it off, half the book consists of the author's own photographs. It's hard to see what relevance these have to the text; they are accompanied by boring, long-winded explanations of how he took them; and most of them are fairly pedestrian (in the case of the HDR images, pretty ugly as well). I'm returning it for a refund.

I bought this book and absolutely DEVOURED it! This is a well written, entertaining and instructive guide that will help any photographer interested in BW photography – but more than that, it has enabled me to SEE differently as well as to even re-visit some older color photos for new processing. I think that my sense of composition has been forever altered (for the better!) and my toolkit of ideas has really grown!

The book provides some interesting background of B&W photography. I wish it had provided more artistic elaboration and inspiration.

I was looking for a technical "how to" guide for Black and White conversions but instead found myself reading through long passages about the places where the photos were taken, how the day was spent up to the point when the camera finally clicked. That is not what I had expected and definitely not what I am interested in. As the book progresses we finally get to the more technical sections of how to handle the whole conversion in PS, Nik, Topaz etc. but you have to read through a lot of travel stories to finally get there.... some people may enjoy that part which has nothing to do with becoming a better photographer, others may find it annoying (me!). You may learn just as much about B&W conversions from watching PS tutorials etc online....

Love this book. A great read and highly informative by one of the best writers on the subject. Can't go wrong

I found the book very enjoyable and well written. The author covers all the essential information needed to approach black and white photography from both a creative and a technical standpoint. He goes into sufficient technical detail to make it clear exactly how he achieved the final result for each image he shows.Each photograph is clearly captioned with basic exposure information, equipment used and post processing. Refreshingly, he doesn't generally name the brands of cameras and lenses he uses and nor is there a chapter on what kit is needed.It is clear, though, that he uses a variety of kit from an iPhone on up.He does discuss the software he uses by brand name, in the captions and elsewhere, which is very helpful.The book is very well laid out, and divided into short, beautifully illustrated and easily assimilated sections.The author has skilfully integrated the technical and creative aspects into a narrative which puts his images within the context of his photographic travels.The book is written with a light touch and would be accessible to all who aspire to improve their black and white photography.

Brilliant delivery and book is brilliant

Excellent book. Although I'm familiar with the use of the software mentioned in this book, I picked up a huge number of tips and ideas.