Your wedding will be one of the biggest, most important days of your life – so it’s important to capture the moment in the best way possible. 

However, photography can be difficult so more and more couples are opting for black and white photography for their wedding day.

There are plenty of benefits to using black and white photography, such as how it helps minimize distractions in the frame and adds more emotion to every photograph. 

If you are still not convinced, then check out these ten amazing black and white photography ideas for inspiration. 

1. Use Silhouettes To Your Advantage

One of the most effective ways to use black and white photography is to create dark outlines of the main objects in the frame to create a romantic silhouetted photograph. 

Most couples use this technique to take an intimate portrait with each other (as this example has also done) as it perfectly captures the love between both members of the wedding couple.

It helps minimize any distractions in the frame – such as the dress, the decor, the guests – and captures exactly what is important on this special day: the love between two people. 

2. Take Beautiful Photos In Difficult Lighting

One thing that most wedding photographers mess up is the lighting and sometimes, it’s not their fault.

Weddings are huge events that can stretch from early morning to late into the night, so it can be difficult to capture spontaneous moments without the right lighting.

Black and white photography helps change that by upping the contrast, thus capturing the light parts while deepening the dark.

This allows you to capture amazing moments no matter the lighting. Take this photograph as an example – trying to capture a moment like this in color would not only be difficult but distracting.

Yet, the black and white helps you capture all the details you need. 

3. Capture What’s Important

Another popular technique used in photography is blur, and it’s perfect for weddings as it can help minimize the noise of the guests and focus on the wedding couple in photographs.

However, the blur technique can look messy when done in color as it turns the background into a patchwork for different colors all bleeding into one another. 

Using black and white photography allows you to blur and distort images with ease, and so you can capture important moments such as this photograph without drowning out the focus in a blend of colors. 

4. Turn A Dreary Day Into A Stunning Background

Everyone wants the perfect weather for their wedding day but it doesn’t always turn out that way.

If you aren’t lucky enough to capture blue skies for your wedding photographs, then black and white technology can help you turn those clouds into a pristine white background. 

This wedding photograph does an amazing job of turning a depressing foggy day into an emotive, mystical wedding photo.

The bad weather becomes more of a misty effect that helps enhance the beauty of the landscape in this photograph. 

5. Make Random Moments Meaningful

Taking photographs in black and white has the advantage of giving the photograph (no matter its subject) a lot more emotion and meaning.

This means that you can capture random moments but turn them into emotional keepsakes simply by capturing them in black and white rather than color. 

This photograph is an amazing example.

Although it is just a random shot of the bride getting ready with her party, it is far more meaningful in black and white than it would be in color. 

So, by using black and white photography, no snapshot is a waste! 

6. Make It Your Theme

Black and white photography can also play into the theme of your wedding, especially if you are aiming for a vintage or sophisticated styled wedding.

For example, this photograph plays on the black and white theme and decided to include other black and white iconography in their wedding photographs.

The couple have decided to take a gorgeous photograph while standing on a chessboard – again channeling the black and white theme!

Not only does this help make the photograph more appealing that it would have been in color, but it also boosts the playfulness of the image. 

So, try making black and white the theme of your wedding – whether it’s in the color scheme, the decor, or food!  

7. Use Contrast To Highlight The Bride

One of the downsides to black and white photography is that by upping the contrast, the groom can sometimes fade into the background as most of his suit (unless he is wearing a light color) blends in with the darkness. 

However, there is a way to use this feature to your advantage – by making the bride the spotlight in any of her pictures! 

By wearing white, the bride often sticks out in black and white photography as long as the background is relatively darker.

So, if you want to capture some amazing portraits of the bride in her dress, black and white photography will help her make the center of every photograph. 

8. Make Your Photographs Timeless

Although black and white photography is mostly associated with the past, it can be used in modern photography to help create timeless images that will last for decades.

As a result, black and white photography is also used as a way to reflect on the past while looking forward to the future. 

Nothing better captures this than this photograph of a bride with her mother and grandmother.

Three generations all at once, yet the black and white photography helps capture the meaning in this image in an emotive way. 

9. Turn Your Venue Into An Amazing Background

When it comes to the background of your wedding photographs, using black and white can help turn any brick wall into an amazing background.

This is because black and white photography works amazingly well on architecture and helps capture its features amazingly well. 

This wedding couple used this to their advantage and now have a wedding photograph with a background that uses the best of their venue.

10. Use Lighting To Your Advantage

Boosting the contrast can help brighten up certain points of light in your photographic images – which wedding couples can use to their advantage.

Things like candles and fairy lights become pin-point sources of light that can be used to create amazing backgrounds and lighting in black and white photography. 

This wedding couple have used this to great effect by using fairy lights to illuminate their features in a dark room!

This helps capture important features – such as the clothes, the champagne, their facial expressions – and highlight them against a dark background. 

Final Thoughts

So, black and white photography has many uses that can help improve the quality of your wedding photographs.

From boosting the contrast to adding more emotion to every photograph, you can turn random snapshots into timeless pieces of art.