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In my street photography, I'm always chasing a story, whether it's the emotion I've caught in someone's face, a detail as small as the way their hands rest or their clothing falls, or the character of a city itself: the way light lands to create a shadow that stops you, the mood of a place, or how people move around each other and their surroundings.
Black and white has been a huge part of my photography from the early days. I’m a nostalgic soul, and I’m drawn to the nostalgia and romance black and white photography carries. You know, the way it strips away distraction and leaves only what matters. There's so much you can say with black and white. It leans into timelessness, into mood, into the quiet beauty that happens between light and shadow and the variations you can play with in the black and white spectrum. After a while (and with plenty of practice and observation), I’ve started to "see" in black and white. I can tell, even in the moment, what will work, and just as importantly, what won't.
A little example for you, I remember one day catching sight of a gentleman dressed impeccably - brown expensive-looking tweed blazer, smart trousers, tie, wearing a fedora walking down a cobbled street in London’s Covent Garden. He looked incredible. But the day was overcast, the street a flat, dull grey, nothing was popping, and even as I raised my camera I knew it wouldn't translate to black and white. The colours were doing the work, the warmth of that tweed against the cool slate grey street and stripping them away would have stripped away the very thing that made the scene worth shooting.
#A favourite black & white preset
There's one favourite black and white preset I return to for street work: VSCO's B3.
B3 sits in the middle of VSCO's classic black and white lineup - I feel it’s a fairly clean, balanced, true-to-life monochrome conversion. It's less moody and high-contrast than B4 or B5, but has a bit more punch and structure than the softer B1 or B2. That balance is exactly why it works for me - it has range, and it still holds onto a soft quality even once I start adjusting it.
I don't leave it untouched. Because that's part of the magic, and I've always said that editing is like adding that final touch of *you* into your work. I nudge the vignette slightly - never too much (that’s the secret) and adjust the HSL (that’s the hue, saturation, lightness) to bring in a faint tinge of blue (subtle enough that most people won't consciously notice it, but it's there). I’ve had comments from people often describing the result as almost metallic, something you feel like you could touch.
Contrast is trickier - it's a bit of a love-hate for me, because it's so easy to push too far and lose the softness I'm after. Shadows I'll tweak too, but it really depends on the image - sometimes I deepen them, sometimes I hold them back so the detail stays.
The key important restraint is: I don't want to overwork a photo, just enhance what's already there.
#What I like about B3
The biggest thing B3 gives me, though, is that bnw emotion and really, it’s just what it evokes for me.
I'm a self-taught photographer, with no formal training, and I've always believed in observation and practice - that age old saying of “practice, practice and practice some more”, in the shooting as much as the editing. Making mistakes, experimenting, until a way of seeing and working starts to speak to you. You need to believe in your own work and your own style, because if you do, it becomes easy to convince others to believe in that story too. To shoot and edit in your own, unique way.
Shadow depth with B3 isn't uniform, it can go proper deep and moody in the right scene, but it doesn't crush blindly; there's often still a thread of detail left in the dark. And, the mid-tones are where it really shines for me: soft, smooth, with a fine texture running through skin, stone and fabric, never harsh or gritty. And highlights hold their nerve too, skies and glare stay soft rather than blowing out to flat white.
There are simply so many photos I've edited in black and white that simply feel "right" and that "speak" to me. I guess if I had to describe this in a feeling, I'd say it captures nostalgia, a sense of story, of romance, of emotion, of sentimentality.
Put all this together, and it's a mood that sits somewhere between documentary and editorial, grounded enough to feel true to the moment which is importance to me, soft enough to feel nostalgic. For me, that's exactly why it suits street work: there's enough structure to hold a story together, and enough softness to let the feeling through.
But the truth is, editing is experimental. Not every photo, every moment, every detail, every scene has the same feel about it, so it's always about balancing the mood of the image and personalising it. I wouldn't call B3 a finished formula. I'd call it a base. A starting point to build your own experimentation on top of, the way I nudge the vignette or bring in that touch of blue.
Find your own version of it.
That's what black and white does for me in the end, it lets me hold onto a moment a little longer, right as it's already beginning to soften into memory, before it disappears completely.
TIP: this goes for any preset, not just B3, once you've dialled in your look, plus your own tweaks, you can save the whole combination as a Recipe in the VSCO app (super cool). So instead of reapplying the preset and re-adjusting the sliders every time, one tap gets you back to your exact look.
