We offer our wedding clients sample photos that are converted to black and white. We try to choose the images that we feel will work best with the color removed. Sometimes if you have an image with too much detail in the background and lots of mixed colors, a black and white conversion will improve the final image. In this particular photo the woods behind the couple were pretty much all the same, but seemed to clash a bit with the bride and groom. So we thought it would look better in black and white. You can be the judge! We have been asked in the past if our black and white images prevent the client from seeing the same photo in color. The answer is no. We make sure that the client sees all of the images in color, but then we send a few black and white samples of selected images. We even will sometimes include Sepia Tone images if they seem to work well. I think you will enjoy seeing more Black and white architecture photos from other historic destinations.
Black and White Versus Color Photography
As mentioned above, we provide all of our brides and grooms with some black and white samples of their color wedding images. We choose black and white conversions of particular photos for a number of reasons. They are summarized below:
- Candid or documentary look to the image.
- Distracting colors in background taking away from main subjects
- Unavoidable muddy colors in the image
- Unfixable white balance issues making colors look bad
- Subject wearing too many bright colors
- The photo just looks better in black and white!
We understand that it is highly possible that our clients do not always agree with our reasoning above for doing black and white conversions. For this reason, we make sure all of the photos are presented in color no matter what we think. We just want to show the client an alternative look.
SF City Hall Architecture in Black and White
We always like to provide black and white City Hall wedding pictures that show off the architecture in this historic building. I have always felt that black and white images show off architecture the best because there’s no distracting colors to get in the way. Especially at San Francisco City Hall because it’s all pretty much monotone anyway. So as mentioned above, will always provide our brides and grooms with both versions of the wedding pictures, Just in case they don’t like black and white. If you look at this City Hall wedding gallery on our website you will see a few nice examples of black and white and sepia photography. In my opinion, I feel like the best wedding album has maybe just a few black and white images. It’s not a good idea to overdo it but it provides a nice touch to the overall collection of photos.
Sepia Tone as Another Alternative for Wedding Pictures
Certain types of wedding attire lends itself to sepia tone. In particular, brides who want to wear an older style dress that might make you think of the 1920s. We always make sure that these brides receive some beautiful wedding pictures done in sepia tone to match their dress. It’s especially important if the theme of the wedding happens to be vintage. In those cases we would load the couple up with lots of sepia tone and black and white photos. If our couple decides to take the San Francisco photo tour and we go to the cable car turn around, that’s a great place to use sepia tone. I found that cable cards look great in sepia tone. Here is one great example I found on the internet of a San Francisco Cable photo from over a century ago. As you can see, the photos is completely done in Sepia.