The #1 Community for black and white photography

Photo Stories

Behind The Shot

Photographer Spotlight

Where photographers who shoot in black and white come to learn, share and grow

  • The Myth of Photographic Truth

    The Myth of Photographic Truth

    When photography was invented, it was received as something radically different from painting, a mechanical, objective record of reality rather than an interpreted one. That belief was flawed from nearly the very beginning. Here is the real history of photographic truth, and how far we have actually strayed from it.

    Read More »

  • Weekly News Roundup

    Weekly News Roundup

    A solid week for gear news specifically. Fujifilm delivers a serious new super telephoto prime, OM System teases what looks like a new Pen camera, Pentax’s last DSLR quietly disappears from Japanese retailers, Westcott announces a genuinely clever collapsible cart, Metabones returns with refreshed adapters, and a Japanese retailer tests one of the strangest lenses…

    Read More »

  • Photographer Spotlight: Kayleigh Morin

    Photographer Spotlight: Kayleigh Morin

    Kayleigh Morin started as an artist frustrated that drawing could not capture light the way she wanted. Self portraits led to photographing others, and a lifelong love of fashion pulled her toward it as a genre. Her black and white work leans into high contrast, a deliberate choice she says mirrors her own emotional range.…

    Read More »

  • The Color Tool Every Black and White Photographer Should Be Using

    The Color Tool Every Black and White Photographer Should Be Using

    A color editing tool for black and white photography sounds like a contradiction. It is not. It is one of the most precise, powerful ways to expand tonal separation in a monochrome image, and it is closer to traditional darkroom craft than most photographers realize.

    Read More »

  • What Actually Makes an Image Feel Three Dimensional

    What Actually Makes an Image Feel Three Dimensional

    You have probably heard the phrase 3D pop, usually attached to a claim about some specific vintage lens. The actual term is micro contrast, and it is a real, definable thing. It is also one of the more genuinely misunderstood and marketing distorted ideas in photography right now.

    Read More »

  • Behind The shot With Michael Houghton

    Behind The shot With Michael Houghton

    Michael Houghton and his wife fell in love with the Isle of Harris on their first visit in 2015 and have returned most years since. A midwinter fortnight with only a couple of hours of rain, practically unheard of that far north in January, gave him a cold bright morning at low tide, marram grass…

    Read More »

  • The Gap Between Tips and Better Photographs

    The Gap Between Tips and Better Photographs

    You have read the articles. You know the rule of thirds, leading lines, golden hour, the exposure triangle, all of it, fluently. And your photographs have not improved at anywhere near the rate that volume of information would suggest they should have. Here is why that gap is not your fault, and why it will…

    Read More »

  • Weekly News Roundup

    Weekly News Roundup

    A genuinely varied week. A music photographer is suing over a painting made from his image that sold for nearly two million dollars, Linda McCartney is getting her own postage stamps, a New Mexico court hit Meta with its largest child safety fine yet, and the first photographs of a fresh impact crater on the…

    Read More »

  • To Nudge or Not to Nudge

    To Nudge or Not to Nudge

    You spent real time with a subject. You understood something about it a viewer never will just from looking. Do you tell them, or do you let the image speak for itself and trust them to find their own way in.

    Read More »

  • Photographer Spotlight: Leighton Phillips

    Photographer Spotlight: Leighton Phillips

    Leighton Phillips describes his work as Urban Still Life, drawn to the mundane, the ignored, and the visually familiar rather than anything conventionally beautiful. His black and white style emerged gradually, shaped by a belief that removing color lets light and tone carry the emotional weight of a scene. We asked him about a dying…

    Read More »

Sharpen your craft and connect with the community on the Foto app @themonochromecollective