Sometimes I look at a photo in Lightroom and think… maybe this one would be better without color.
You know, like pressing the mute button on a conversation to hear if something deeper is happening under the noise of their mouth moving.
Ok sorry, but some people just talk too much.
Where was I… ah yes, back to this decision.
The decision isn’t always immediate. It’s more of a whisper. An idea that sneaks in sideways while you’re driving down the road in a fuzzy day dream.
That’s how most of these black and white photography ideas started. Not from tutorials or books, but from little scraps of paper in my pocket. Let’s call them notes.
This post is from those.
No examples. No final shots. Just the idea soup. Some of these might be shit. They’re not polished. They’re just mine… for now.
And maybe yours too, if you want to try.
Why I’m Sharing Black and White Photo Ideas I Haven’t Tried Yet
If you’re looking for perfect examples or proven techniques, this probably isn’t your post.
What you will find here: Idea sparks. Notes from the corner of my mind… or pocket that haven’t turned into photographs yet.
You might make something beautiful with them. You might stare blankly and go “nope.”
That’s kind of the point.
Either way, these aren’t technical tips. You won’t find “use a red filter to darken skies” or “boost clarity in Lightroom.”
Instead, you will find themed black and white photo ideas you can run with.
Most of them come from mood, memory, or some weird internal monologue I had while refilling my coffee.
Most important: No photo references. No boxes to fit into. Just ideas… shared so you can take them, twist them, ignore them, or make them your own.
And if you do? Share them with me under this Twitter thread. I want to see what you make. If you do that, I might use your photo in this post, with credit of course.
Collector Note: Make sure you tell me which idea you are going for so I can use your photo for the right idea. Bonus, if you mint the photo, I might collect it.
Let’s get to the black and white photography ideas.
1.) Shoot for Silence: Photos That Feel Like Nobody’s There
Not emptiness. Not isolation. Silence.
What does that look like to you?
For me, it might be an empty tire swing swaying slightly in the breeze. Or the slow swing of a door at a laundromat that’s just been exited.
It can be hard to imagine what silence looks like, but the idea is to make a photo that sounds like a room after the phone stops ringing.
What does silence look like to you?
The fog seems to carry the silence in Memory Yet to Be by Marigold – They say, if you stand still in this silence, you might hear your own voice from the future.
2.) Photograph the Edges of Things
Not the thing itself. The edge.
The worn fabric of a sleeve. The corner of a closed book. Where brick meets brick and mortar forgot its job. Focus on thresholds between light and dark, touch and distance, object and shadow.
Black and white makes these lines louder.
In _rest by Emma Samuel and _growth revolution, the broken edge of a vase holding a candle becomes the subject. A sharp threshold between light and dark, fragile and strong, broken and whole. Black and white makes these differences louder.
3.) Document a Place You Know Too Well
Your backyard. Your street. The break room at work. Your bedroom.
The inside of your fridge. I see you.
Shoot it like you’re documenting it for aliens who’ve never been to Earth. It doesn’t have to be all drama all the time. Just the textures. The moments. The light at 5:57 PM when it hits the grandfather clock weird and turns the floor into a dimensional portal.
A portal that leads to the house of our friend Cassi Moghan, where she explores the confines of the mundane in My Boring Life.
So yeah, make it boring. Then make it matter.
In Leavespan by Harpreet, a familiar park setting is blurred into the background while a book fills the foreground. An everyday scene, yet somehow newly strange. But, like the description says… If you read enough, even the space behind the book becomes familiar.
4.) Treat Shadows Like the Subject
Don’t photograph a person. Photograph their shadow before they arrive.
Don’t photograph a tree. Shoot the shape it casts when the sun’s about to leave.
Black and white images beg for this. Color wants to brag. But shadows? Shadows tell stories in quiet.
For more on shadows: How to Use Shadows in Photography to Create Mood, Drama, and Depth
STOP by Süleyman Tutuş is a creative example of how a shadow is the subject.
5.) Build a Story With Repetition
Find a repeating element. Anything, shoes at the gym, cracks in a sidewalk, windows that don’t match, and shoot only those.
Ten shots. Same subject. Different days or angles.
Then arrange them. Let the viewer notice the similarities first… then the odd one out.
Monochrome gives repetition more space to speak.
Many thanks to SAJI FALL for bringing this idea together so beautifully in “The Story“. Many folks got mixed up when I first shared this and thought I meant repetition inside a single photo. What I was really talking about is repetition across a collection, a series of images that echo each other in subject or form. It’s about building a rhythm from photo to photo, letting the whole set speak as one, with the variations adding the twist.
6.) Photograph the “Before” of Something You’ll Never See the After Of
A dinner table before people arrive.
A wedding dress hanging.
A bed just before someone sleeps in it.
An empty stage with instruments.
You don’t need to document the whole story. Just the part that makes people imagine the rest.
Black and white adds a layer of fiction. Let it.
Shout out to Sashelka.ᵉᵗʰ♡ for this image of a delicious-looking Ice Cream treat before the reckoning. I think we all know where this story leads. You can find more of her work here: Objkt Profile
7.) Chase the Weather You Usually Avoid
Go out on foggy mornings. Wet snow. Blistering sun at noon. Muggy humidity that makes every surface feel soft and gross and difficult to breathe.
OK, maybe if you can’t breathe, stay in.
But rain, definitely go out in the rain if you’ve been avoiding it, but I don’t know why you would do that.
Don’t look for the perfect shot. Look for what these moments feel like without color to help you name them.
Monochrome loves bad weather. It makes you work with texture, shape, contrast, instead of the crutch of a sky that “pops.”
Against the Storm – Photography by Mellodora. Rain or shine, the story doesn’t wait… sometimes you have to step into the storm to capture it.
8.) Photograph Something That’s Already Dead
But not morbidly. Sally Mann already did the dead decomposing bodies thing.
I mean just… naturally past its prime.
I’m thinking more of a broken toy. A crushed can. An old phone booth. An old antique clock. An old couch sitting near the edge of the road.
Black and white strips sentiment and asks you to notice detail.
It helps you ask: what’s left behind when something’s done?
OK fine, maybe I did mean dead, gone, kaput because these fish look done… and cold. Frozen Lake by Mustafa Erbaş depicts fishing on a frozen lake. In Çıldır Lake in eastern Türkiye, nets are placed before the lake freezes, and after the lake freezes, the ice is broken and the nets are collected and the fish are laid on the ice.
9.) Use Blur to Suggest a Memory
Shoot something out of focus on purpose. Or capture motion blur. Or shoot through something that smears the edges.
Let the photo become less about clarity, more about the feeling of remembering badly.
A fuzzy daydream as you’re cruising down the road (see featured image).
Black and white turns blur into metaphor.
The following image was submitted by Cassi Moghan. The Van has a soft blur around the edge that makes it feel like a half-remembered place from a dream, more about the memory than the details.
10.) Photograph Something You Feel Guilty About
This don’t have to be a confessional. It can be subtle.
Maybe it’s the dishes you said you’d do. Or the pack of cigarettes you swore you quit. Or a place you visit but pretend you don’t.
Shoot it honestly. With care. Like it matters, even if you’re still not sure it does.
Monochrome invites honesty without the fuss. You don’t need to explain yourself. Let the photography be your confession.
In Echoes Between the Pages by Bayne, the nostalgia of a bookstall with its worn paperback pages stirs a quiet guilt in the photographer. It’s a reminder of stories once held in hand, now too often replaced by the glow of a screen. I love how the photograph seems to linger between past and present, holding space for what we’ve set aside but never stopped yearning for.
11.) Make a Portrait With No Face
Try this: shoot a portrait that says something about the person without showing their face.
Hands. Their desk. The mess they leave behind. The way they wear their coat.
Black and white strips the image down to essence.
So let the essence speak. No face.
The following image was submitted by _growth revolution who explains, “_the hollow” is a portrait without a face. Just the weight of items to portray the space we hold for memories.
12.) Photograph Things That Don’t Match Their Environment
A beach ball in a parking lot.
A chair in a hallway where it clearly doesn’t belong.
Photograph it without irony. Let it be quiet and strange. Let it feel like a dream you almost remembered.
Like how I’m Still Alive by ALI depicts a tiny flower pushing up through the deep, cracked earth. A fragile life in a place that looks like it shouldn’t allow it.
13.) Look for Absence
Instead of chasing interesting things, look for what’s missing.
A shelf with only one item. A conversation with only one participant. A space where something should be… but isn’t.
Let black and white exaggerate that absence.
Let it feel like forgetting…
or remembering…
Where the silence took you and the Absence you left.
Where the Silence Took You by CORAlinesaidso.tez – This piece is in the memory of one of my friends whom i recently lost. she loved wearing dresses and she was an autumn lover… this photo is an ode to her
Final Thought, If You Made It This Far
There’s something beautiful about not having it all figured out yet.
None of these ideas are groundbreaking by their self. Most of them probably won’t work the way I think they will. But that’s the magic of it. Trying without knowing.
And I want to see what you try too.
If any of these ideas spark something in you, shoot it. Then reply to this Twitter post with your image. Or post it anywhere and tag me.
I’ll be updating this post later with some of your work, not as “examples,” but as echoes. Proof that a weird little idea might lead somewhere.
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