Foldable DIY Photography Light Tent

A light tent is an extremely useful tool in photography, particularly for product shots, close-ups, and any time you want a consistent white (or even colored) backdrop and even lighting. This article will explain the simple steps behind creating your own DIY Photography Light Tent, and, as a bonus, this version will fold flat for easy storage.

Supplies for Your DIY Light Tent

You only need a few basic supplies for building your own light tent, and you may already have them all in your house. The most important thing you will need is a sturdy cardboard box, at least 12 inches square but a bit larger will work even better. The one I used was a 10 x 12 x 18 inch shipping box, scavenged out of the recycling bin.

The rest of the supplies you need include tissue paper, a roll of shipping tape, scissors, and an x-acto or utility knife. A cutting board and clear ruler are also helpful. You can use duct tape, if you wish, but I prefer the clear shipping tape, as you do not have to worry about it blocking any of the light from your final product. After you have built your box, you will also need a sheet of bright white poster board (or any other colors you might want) to use for the backdrop.

Supply Summary:

• Cardboard box, at least 12 inches square
• Tissue paper (2-3 sheets, more for larger boxes)
• Clear shipping tape
• Scissors
• X-acto or utility knife
• Sheet of white poster board

Useful but not required:

• Cutting mat
• Clear straight-edge ruler
• Pencil or marker for drawing out lines
• 2 small binder clips
• 2 posable light stands with lights

Building the Light Tent

The whole process of constructing the light tent should take you under a half an hour from start to finish. (Mine took significantly longer since I kept stopping at every step to take these pictures. But even with that, I was done in less than an hour.)

The first step is choosing whether you want to use the flaps on the 'top' of the box to extend its depth. Since my box was only 10 inches deep, I chose to tape together the flaps on both the inside and outside, as shown. This gave me a final depth of 16 inches. If you are using a deeper box, you may choose to simply cut off the flaps.

The next step is to determine which side will be the bottom of your light tent and then to measure in at least one inch from all edges for the remaining three sides of the box. (An inch will give enough room to hold the tape without any tape showing, but you may want to extend it to an inch and a half for increased stability.)

Use the x-acto or utility knife to cut out all three sides, being careful not to cut through to the other side of the box. I used a self-healing craft cutting mat at this step to protect the underside of the box and a clear ruler to guide the knife. You can discard the cutout pieces.

At this point, you can stand the box up and have a look at it. The original bottom of the box will now be the back of your light tent. Do not tape down the bottom/back just yet, if you want to be able to easily re-flatten your light tent for easy storage.

One other feature I decided to add to my light tent was a slot for a binder clip. Use the x-acto or utility knife to cut two small slits out of the top of your light tent along the back side, one near each corner. This will allow you to clip the binder clip around the back of the light tent from the outside to the inside, as shown. You will then be able to use these clips to hold up your poster board backdrops with a minimum of fuss. (Confused? Keep reading; this will make more sense later when you can see them in action.)

The next step is cutting and taping down the tissue paper. Cut the tissue paper about a half-inch shorter on all sides than the actual box. This will give you a gap of cardboard to attach the tape to, as well as room to wrap the tape around the sides. If you have not yet taped together the back of the light tent (formerly the bottom of the box), then you can wrap the tape around and inside the bottom flap only, as shown. This will allow you to flatten and fold-down the box later for easy storage.

You should have tissue paper around the two sides and the top. At this point you can lightly tape down the back of the light tent. (I recommend using a big piece of tape inside to hold it too.) Congratulations!  You have just created your own Foldable DIY Light Tent!

The last step is to create the background for your seamless backdrop. Take a piece of white poster board and cut it to the final width of your box. Slide it up inside to the top, and use the two binder clips to hold it securely to the box. (See how handy those were?) Push the poster board in until you have a smooth, even curve along the back, and avoid bending or folding it in any way. You can either trim the board at this point to match your box size (and attach at the bottom using two more binder clips), or you can leave it extending from the box. As shown, I chose to leave mine extending out, which will give a little more of the white foreground to work with.

When you are finished using the light tent, all you need to do is gently slice through the tape holding the back of the box together, and then open the back flaps and lay the box closed as shown. The tape will be flexible enough to allow itself to be folded. Now you can easily store it somewhere out of the way, like under a bed or behind a book case.

Lighting Your Light Tent

You can use your light tent in daylight to diffuse incoming sunlight and eliminate harsh shadows. Simply place your light tent in a well-lit spot near a window, with the back of the tent toward the window and with both sides evenly lit.

Depending on the angle that you want, you can rest your camera directly on the table top or use a tripod to hold it steady. This arrangement will allow you to capture evenly-lit shots, and the light through the top panel can even create an interesting reflection, if you are using shiny poster board.

Nail polish photographed using the set up above exactly as shown.

The alternative way to light your light tent is to use two lamps, one on each side of the box, which will balance each other out and create even lighting.

Pay attention to the style of light bulb you are using, as many bulbs are designed to impart a "warm glow" to our interior lighting, but this warm glow can translate into a yellow-ish hue in your shots (as seen above). Read the packaging of your light bulbs carefully, and you should be able to find the color temperature (in K for Kelvins) of the light. You can set the white balance on your camera to try and match the temperature of the lights, if known. (For example, the daylight white balance setting matches 5400K, fluorescent matches 3800K, etc.) If you shoot in RAW, you can adjust your white balance in post-processing.

Example of the same shot, adjusting the white balance from the RAW file.
Originally shot using compact fluorescent bulbs.

DIY Light Tent Summary

A light tent is an incredible useful tool for taking high quality photographs of smaller items and objects. It is particularly useful if you want crisp shots of products for sale and for instructional photographs on a blog or web site. If you want your creations to look their best, then use a light box.

This post has covered the basics for creating your own foldable light tent out of everyday materials. The next posts in this series will cover How to Use a Light Tent for Product Photography (more detailed advice and how to), a Face-Off: DIY Light Tent vs. Store-Bought, and a product review of the Square Perfect SP500 Platinum Light Tent Kit.

Have you built your own light tent? Post a picture or comment below and share your results!

Want more great ideas? Follow Boost Your Photography on Pinterest: Boost Your Photography

Not sure you want to go the DIY route? Read the Product Review of the Square Perfect Light Tent for a kit option.

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

Black and White Book Club: week 4 (Feb. 17-23)

Welcome to the fourth week of our Black and White Book Club study of Michael Freeman's The Complete Guide to Black and White Digital Photography (or the Black and White Photography Field Guide. Be sure to read the overview and week 1, week 2, and week 3 posts if you are just joining in. Everyone is welcome to participate, even without a copy of either book, but if you do have the book, you will have more to draw on during the month.

Week 4, Feb. 17-23, will focus on Creative Choices in Exposure – exploring over- and underexposure, high key, low key, high contrast, and low contrast. We will be covering pgs. 138-165/140-165 (optional processing pages: 104-121/104-119).

Creative Choices in Black and White Photography

This week we are jumping ahead to section three, Creative Choices (section two, you may remember, we are covering in optional chunks each week). Freeman starts the section by explaining that, "Possibly the greatest difference between photographing in color and photographing in black and white is in expression" (pg. 139/140). This week we will be exploring the limits of creative expression in black and white by looking at the two extremes of low key and high key images.

Freeman begins by comparing and contrasting several different photographers and their styles of black and white photography, from Ansel Adams and Edward Weston with their focus on the range of tones, to Paul Strand and his attention to the middle range of grays, to Bill Brandt and Don McCullin and their high contrast shots with extreme blacks and extreme whites. Each of these styles is a valid approach to black and white, and the chapters focus on ways to achieve these different looks and styles.

Low key image, showing the classic left-heavy low key histogram.

Think about picking a favorite photographer and style for the week and try to spend the week shooting and processing in this style. Or, take the opposite approach and try a different style each day and see which one better fits your needs for your given scene and subject. Consider sharing in your description the thought process behind your style and processing choice.

Freeman also provides a lot of varied examples of processing options for the same image, looking at the ideas of high contrast, low contrast, low key, and high key. Do you always agree with his choices about which image works 'best' for each scenario?  If so or if not, why?

For those without the book, here is how Freeman describes each style:

• High Contrast: "increasing contrast is a particularly good way of emphasizing structure and form …" (pg. 150/150). A high contrast image tends to reach towards both ends of the histogram as well.
• Low Contrast: "some picture situations are obvious candidates [for low contrast]. Fog, mist, rain, indeed any softening effects to the atmosphere, has a certain evocative appeal … low-contrast images like this tend to sit well inside the scale, with no blacks and no whites" (pg. 154/154).
• Low Key: "the setting is a dark interior, with weak side-lighting that reveals enough of the subject to make it obvious, and a background that can easily go to black" (pg. 158/158).
• High Key: "For high key to work visually, it demands high contrast with a few remaining dark tones …" and "there usually needs to be some smaller, darker elements that are integral to the image" (pgs. 160-162/160-162).

Example of a low contrast subject - a foggy morning - and some space on both ends of the histogram

Think about trying and exploring each of these different approaches to black and white photography this week, or choose one to really focus in on.

Delving in to "Digital Monochrome" chapters

This week's optional section on digital processing takes a look at the process of converting color images to black and white using colors and hues (pages 104-121/104-119).

Freeman explains how we intuitively 'see' colors as having certain values in black and white, and so there are conversions that make more 'sense' to our brains when we are trying to translate what we see in black and white. There is a brief discussion of the use of color filters in black and white photography, which fits in with what many of us have been discovering when exploring the differences between different color channels and how colors and hues are recorded.

More of an overexposed image than traditional high key, but you can see the high key histogram.

Freeman then explores several different processing examples, looking at how differential treatment of the different hue sliders can have a dramatic impact on the final image. There are some suggestions specific to how to increase or reduce contrast in an image, which might be of interest to those exploring high contrast or low contrast images this week.

Multiple Ways to Join the Book Club

Want to participate? Post a comment with your thoughts or a link to a picture you have taken for the Book Club and an explanation of how the book influenced your image. Or, you can post pictures and contribute to the discussion by joining the Photography Book Club Group on Flickr.

Parting words for the week, "'Full' black-and-white photography means anticipating, selecting, and composing monochrome right from the start. And the only way to do this is to train oneself to think and see in black and white" (pg. 140/142).

Agree or disagree?  Is the Book Club changing how you think in black and white?

Click here to read the post for week 5.

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

Guest Post: How to Use Lens Flare to Your Advantage

I have a follow up to my earlier post on Digital Photography School about Using Sunflares and Starbursts to Create Stunning Images. The new article focuses on How to Use Lens Flare to Your Advantage. Lens flare can be a creative choice used to add a feeling of light and brightness to a photograph.

Hop on over and read How to Use Lens Flare to Your Advantage to find out more!

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

5-Minute Heart-Shaped Bokeh Photography

Heart-shaped bokeh is a popular photography trick for Valentine's Day or any time you want to show a little extra love in your photographs. All you need is five minutes and a few basic supplies, and you can be shooting heart-shaped bokeh.

Supplies for Heart-Shaped Bokeh

You could always buy a shaped-bokeh kit, but why bother when you likely already have all the supplies to make your own?

As pictured, all you need are

• A piece of black paper (thicker cardstock works best)
• A rubber band
• A piece of tape
• Scissors
• A 50mm lens

You can get extra crafty and use an x-acto knife for making the really small cuts, but a sharp scissors works well for cutting both sides of the heart at once. You could even use a heart-shaped hole punch, if you happen to have one.

Now, start your timer for five minutes, and by the end of it you should easily have been able to

• Cut a piece of black cardstock an inch or so thick and long enough to wrap around your 50 mm lens. Roll it around the lens and tape it together.

• Trace around your 50 mm lens to make a circle. Cut it out, leaving a half inch or so all the way around. Cut notches from the outside into the traced circle, which you will later bend to secure the circle onto the front of the lens.

• Fold the circle in half and re-open at least twice to find the exact center. Trace your heart or be brave and skip right to cutting it out. For an introductory 50mm kit lens, you can make your shape up about 17 mm long. (Here's the article on the math behind that, if you are curious.)

And, that's it. Place the roll over your 50 mm lens, hold the circle with the heart in front of your lens, and use the rubber band to secure the folded flaps around the outside of the roll. Now you need to find yourself a bokeh source, set up your subject, and start shooting.

Setting Up and Photographing Shaped Bokeh

If you need a little more background on bokeh, you may want to click on and read the posts All about Bokeh and Shaped Bokeh for more details and examples of bokeh and how to.

You will need a point light source to create the bokeh and turn into the heart shapes: a string of lights works well. I recommend using a dark background, if possible, to hang the lights. You can use a wall or a dark set of curtains if you do not have a backdrop. (The difficulty with a lighter-colored backdrop is that you will end up seeing the wires between the lights, rather than just the lights themselves.)

Consider using a tripod for your camera. You will be shooting at the widest aperture you can (f/1.8 or faster, hopefully, if you are using a 50 mm f/1.8 lens for example), but putting the heart shape in front of the lens will cut down on the amount of light reaching the sensor and require a longer shutter speed. Shoot in manual or aperture priority, set the aperture to f/1.8 or faster, and work from there. Consider using a flash if you want to illuminate only the subject and leave the background darker. Use a remote or 2-second countdown timer to avoid camera shake on the tripod.

You want to get your subject as close the camera as possible, while keeping the background and lights at least twice as far away. The closer-in the camera can focus, the larger the final bokeh hearts will be. You may need to experiment a bit to find the best locations for your given subject.

Summary: Heart-Shaped Bokeh Photography

Now you are ready to shoot your own heart-shaped bokeh in five minutes or less. You could create an image for your own Valentine's Day cards or just for fun. You can apply the same ideas to creating other shapes, as well.

What will you create?  Share a link or picture in the comments below!

Want more great ideas? Follow Boost Your Photography on Pinterest: Boost Your Photography

This post is also linked to Do Tell Tuesday, One Project at a Time, and What I Learned Wednesday.

Black and White Book Club: week 3 (Feb. 10-16)

We have reached the mid-point of the month for our Black and White Book Club study of Michael Freeman's The Complete Guide to Black and White Digital Photography (or the Black and White Photography Field Guide). Be sure to read the overview, week 1, and week 2 posts if you are just joining in. Everyone is welcome to participate, even without a copy of either book, but if you do have the book, you will have more to draw on during the month.

Week 3 (Feb. 10-16th) will focus on Elements of Visual Design in Photography – thinking about shape, structure, tone, volume, form, and texture. We will be covering pgs. 46-61/44-59 (optional processing pages: 82-103/80-103).


* For those participating via 365project.org and want to also add the "Flash of Color" element, Feb. 13th will be the day for Flash of Color – an image processed with selective color to bring out only a specific color. Last year was flash of red, but you are free to choose any color. This will create one color image in the precise center of your 365project calendar.

Elements of Visual Design in Photography

This week's chapters cover some of the elements of visual design in photography: shape, structure, tonal nuance, volume, form, and texture. (For the curious, I am borrowing the cohesive term "elements of visual design" from last August's Photography Book Club of Freeman Patterson's Photography and the Art of Seeing.)

I will admit to being a little frustrated at Freeman's brevity in these chapters. While he alludes to the various elements in the chapter titles, he does not do much to define or explain them for the reader. So, for the curious, I will be borrowing more from Patterson to lay out some groundwork.

Shape: "All shapes are two-dimensional, such as a square, a circle, the silhouette of a tree, or the outline of a cup … In real life every three-dimensional object has as many shapes as there are positions from which it can be viewed" (Photography and the Art of Seeing, pg. 106). Freeman focuses on the idea of shape as silhouette that "depends heavily on outline … defined by edge contrast" (pg. 46/44). Think about edges and silhouettes and how to see shapes this week.

Tone: Tone includes the range of hues or colors in an image, which is simplified when shooting in black and white to the tones from pure black to pure white and all the grays in between. "What this allows is a clearer, purer concentration on the subtleties of transition between shades of gray" (pg. 50/46). Think about which tones are present or featured in your image.

Volume and Form: While a two-dimensional photograph does not have actual depth, "the illusion of depth or perspective is easily created. In fact, it occurs naturally, owing to the ways that the intensity, quality, direction, and colour of light illuminate the subject matter" (Ibid, pg. 107).  Freeman shows in his example the impact of side lighting in highlighting the volume and form of a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional photograph. Think about lighting and the angles of your lighting this week. See how side lighting or backlighting or front lighting changes your image.

Texture: "Texture is the visual weave or fabric-like nature of surfaces … As much as anything else, the direction from which light falls on the subject matter influences the photographic representation of texture" (Ibid, pg. 107). Freeman stresses that "almost any relief texture looks stronger under a point-source light that casts hard shadows, and in particular under raking light, from a low angle" (pg. 54/52). Try to search out some interesting textures this week or fill the frame with a single texture or a combination of textures.

There are a lot of ways to apply these ideas this week, as the subjects are up to you. Think about shapes and angles; think about lighting and timing; and think about what you want to achieve: shape vs. volume, texture vs. smooth tones, or …

Delving in to "Digital Monochrome" chapters

This week's optional section on digital processing takes a look at some unusual processing options as well as a basic processing workflow (pages 82-103/80-103). The infrared spectrum, while outside our normal visual range, is not necessarily outside the range that can be capture by your camera's sensor. Freeman details how cameras are created to filter out IR and how you could use infrared for photography.

The processing workflow chapters are really at the heart of the "digital darkroom" idea. Freeman provides an overview of what some of the options and panels look like in various RAW conversion programs, and he devotes an entire chapter to Silver Efex Pro.

Example of an Adobe Camera Raw workspace

"Reduced to the simplest, there are just three basic image qualities for monochrome photography: brightness, contrast, and tonal range. When you shoot … you can influence just the first of these … when it comes to processing, however, each of these is adjustable" (pg. 96). Freeman then walks through some basic definitions of each of these three terms and covers some common ways to adjust them in post-processing, often including several variants to accomplish the same goal. He suggests adjusting the end points of the histogram first (tonal range), then adjusting the brightness, and finally working on the contrast, and he provides several comparative (though often quite subtle) examples of such adjustments.

Does his process match your workflow for black and white photography? Do you think there are steps that he is missing, that you would re-arrange, or that seem like they need greater explanation? Consider sharing in your descriptions some detail about your workflow process this week.

Multiple Ways to Join the Book Club

Want to participate? Post a comment with your thoughts or a link to a picture you have taken for the Book Club and an explanation of how the book influenced your image. Or, you can post pictures and contribute to the discussion by joining the Photography Book Club Group on Flickr.

Parting words for the week, "It makes it possible to achieve almost any conceivable distribution of tones, with almost too much choice. It certainly demands a clear idea of what you want to achieve, ideally before you begin the process" (pg. 50/46).

Anyone else finding exactly this aspect a struggle?

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

How to Master the Heart-Shaped Shadow in Time for Valentines

Heart-shaped shadows are an easy and versatile way to create a memorable Valentines' Day photograph, and you can even print one to use as a homemade Valentines' Day card. This article will lay out the basics behind creating amazing heart-shaped shadows every time.

Supplies for Heart-Shaped Shadows

The supplies for casting and capturing heart-shaped shadows are quite simple: a larger-sized book with a lot of pages (large paperbacks are often more flexible) and a circle to cast the heart-shaped shadow. You can use any circular, see-through object to cast the shadows. Rings are popular choices, for their shape and romantic connotations. You can also use a variety of camera accessories that you might already have lying around. All of the heart-shaped shadows in this article were created with either a single extension tube or colored filters.

Technique and Timing for Heart-Shaped Shadows

The trick behind creating the heart-shaped shadow is shooting near a bright window in the early morning or late afternoon. You want direct light from the sun to create the strongest shadows, and the lower the sun is in the sky, the longer and more prominent the shadow. Right now, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, a south-facing window is ideal, as the sun is farther south in the sky and casts long shadows during much of the day. Consider also shooting near a glass sliding door or other large window without panes, so you can avoid having window-pane shadows cluttering up your image.

The photograph above shows one possible setup. (You can see I had to use a standard window and try to shoot around the window-pane shadows.) You want to use a large book, opened towards the middle, in order to get an even, symmetrical heart shadow. Here, I was using a Bible opened to the 1 Corinthians 13 verses popular at weddings. Since this is not near the center of the book, you can see that I used a heavy bottle to slightly prop up the pages on the right-hand side to better match the curve of the left-hand side pages.

Secret tip: you may need a little help getting your circle to stay upright in your book. The extension tube I used was wide enough that it could generally stand up and stay by itself without assistance, but the colored filters were much smaller and had a tendency to immediately fall over. I used tiny pieces of a product called Mini-Hold, a wax adhesive created to hold dollhouse furniture and accessories in place without leaving residue. Two tiny dots where the filter touched the book were enough to hold the filter upright and not be visible in the final photograph.

Strategies and Reminders

Spend some time thinking about which book and which pages you might want to use for this type of shot. Depending on your angle and aperture, it may be possible to emphasize certain words or phrases in or around the shadow. (This is particularly easy when using a ring to cast shadows, as the smaller heart draws more attention to fewer words.)

These two shots were both taken using the book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, which is a heart-warming tale of love, childhood, and the bond between people and stuffed animals. I really liked the idea behind top choice, showing the older couple meeting and welcoming Edward, but I felt like the color picture was a bit overwhelming and competed for attention with the heart. The bottom version still gave a hint of the story, in the blurring words and black and white picture, but the empty space gave more emphasis to the heart. I ended up choosing the second image for printing and creating my own Valentines' Day cards.

Also be sure to consider your point-of-view and aperture. Experiment with different angles of shooting, including straight on and more off-centered. Try getting higher and lower and see how it influences the feel of the final shot. You should also try a few different apertures, both wide and narrow, to see how the different depth of fields (area of the photograph in focus) changes the feel of the final image.

No need to limit yourself to just one shadow, either! Have fun combining multiples and see what kinds of effects you can  create!

Bonus: Book-Heart Valentines' Day Idea

And, since you already have your camera and a large, floppy book out, why not try creating a heart-shaped book too? A large, paperback book works well, as you have lots of pages to work with. The trick here is finding the angle and heart-shape you want and then using a paperclip or small binder clip in the back to hold the heart-shape in place.

Did you try either of these techniques? How did they turn out?  Share a link to your final image or homemade Valentines below.

Want more great ideas?  Follow Boost Your Photography on Pinterest: Boost Your Photography

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.

Black and White Book Club: week 2

Welcome to the first full-length week of this month's Black and White Book Club study of Michael Freeman's The Complete Guide to Black and White Digital Photography (or the pocket-sized Black and White Photography Field Guide). Be sure to read the overview and week 1 posts if you are just joining in. Everyone is welcome to participate, even without a copy of either book, but if you do have the book, you will have more to draw on during the month.

Week 2 (Feb. 3rd-9th) will focus on Black and White Photography as Normality and the photographic styles and subjects of still life, landscape, street, portrait, architecture, and journalism or documentary photography. We will be covering pgs. 24-45/22-43 (optional processing pages: 69-81/66-79).

Black and White as Normality

In these chapters, Freeman presents an historical overview of the progression from black and white to color in photography and focuses in on this counter-intuitive notion that black and white became seen as the normal representation of events and the world, persisting in newspapers through the 1980s.  "How and why this happened is worth considering, because the decades of black-and-white 'normality' impressed the monochrome image with a particular strength and legitimacy" (pg. 24/22).

He includes a variety of quotations from famous photographers at the time concerning their thoughts about black and white vs. color photography, including Walker Evans' adaptation,  "'Color tends to corrupt photography and absolute color corrupts absolutely'" (pg. 27/27). Looking backwards from our colorized present, do you agree or disagree? We can flip the question from last week and ask, "When and where it would be better to shoot color" (pg. 29/28). Is your default thought color photography or black and white photography? How (or does it) influence how you shoot?

Later chapters continue to push this issue of conscious choice and the perception of what is or is not better suited to black and white compared to color. Freeman presents several side-by-side comparisons of images in both color and black and white to allow a direct comparison. Consider posting a color comparison this week in an extra album so that we can compare the two and think about the relative merits of each.

Here, I prefer the black and white version as it minimizes the distraction of colored coats and allows your attention to focus on the lines, form, and repetition of people.

While the focus of these chapters is on 'normality' and styles of photography such as street, documentary, and journalism photography, you can also take these ideas and apply them more broadly, encompassing topics such as still life, landscape, portrait, and architecture photography. Spend time this week thinking about how your perceptions of 'normal' are influenced or even tricked by the use of black and white for such subjects.

Delving in to "Digital Monochrome" chapters

Based on an informal survey of book club participants on 365project.org, it seems like many of you are planning to post-process your images into black and white (rather than just shooting monochrome in-camera). Section 2: The Digital Monochrome is a section of the book that is not officially 'assigned' for any week but contains a plethora of useful information about digitally manipulating images for black and white output. I will include a few thoughts each week about chapters within this section then for those who post-process.

Initial big ideas from the first few chapters (pgs. 69-81/66-79) include a look at the three different color channels that make up a single image (blue, red, green) and how each channel alone renders a very different version of the image in black and white. Additionally, you can use highlight recovery tools with RAW files to attempt to reconstruct missing (clipped) information in one channel by using information in another channel. One channel can also be prioritized to avoid the digital noise more visible in other channels.

Elements, like the red sign and flag, appear very differently in the different channels.

Are you using the three channels differently when you are processing your images? If so, consider sharing which you used (and why) in your image caption or in the comments. This could be a great opportunity for all of us to learn new skills in our processing as well as in all the other aspects of our photography.

Multiple Ways to Join the Book Club

Want to participate? Post a comment with your thoughts or a link to a picture you have taken for the Book Club and an explanation of how the book influenced your image. Or, you can post pictures and contribute to the discussion by joining the Photography Book Club Group on Flickr.

Parting words for the week, from Robert Frank, "'Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which all mankind is subjected'" (pg. 29/29). Read more about Robert Frank and see examples of his black and white images at his Artsy page.

Click here to read the post for Week 3.

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Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.