The Photographer’s Black and White Handbook: Making and Processing Stunning Digital Black and White Photos

Harold Davis is the digital black and white equal of Ansel Adams’s traditional wet photography. Adams would be awed by Davis’s work. In The Photographer’s Black and White Handbook Davis presents a large number of his photographs, and virtually every one is a masterpiece, ready for gallery or museum exhibit. In spite of the coffee-table quality of this volume, Davis meant to give us a teaching tool, a handbook for serious digital photographers. This is not for the beginner or for iPhone photographers. In five chapters, we learn about techniques and artistic presentations in finest detail, with photographs given as examples. To achieve what Davis did, you need a high-end single lens digital camera, sophisticated software such as Photoshop or Lightroom, a high-end ink-jet printer, and possibly plugins to either of the software programs and an artistic ability. Most of the photos are full page or double spread. Each one has a very detailed description of the scene, giving us a virtual travelogue and a detailed technical description. These are unequaled teaching tools of photography. We find excellent workflows such as from color to black and white, complete with graphic visuals or Photoshop-using channel mixer. Everything here is highly technical.