11.12. | The Realm of Reflections: How to Start Dreaming in Black and White (and Avoid 50 mm!)

Hello, Light Hunters and Surreal Adventurers! Have you ever felt that reality is just a little too... real? 🙄

That everyday scenes are missing that strange, dreamlike, almost otherworldly vibration? If so, welcome to the club. Today we'll learn how to make surreal images—not by taking the lazy “I'll fix it in Photoshop” route, but by learning to think in black and white before we even press the shutter.

Get ready. Your brain may feel slightly dizzy!

Our Mantra: Avoid the Normal!

First, let's throw out those boring focal lengths that look “normal, natural and true to life”. Most photographers are told to shoot somewhere between 24 and 50 mm. We're going to do exactly the opposite.

The Adventure of Extreme Lenses

Ultra-wide Mania: If you want the viewer to feel uneasy—or, conversely, almost euphoric—grab an ultra-wide lens such as a 16–28 mm F2.8 or a 20 mm F1.4. These beauties distort geometry and exaggerate scale and movement. It's like seeing a caricature of the world.

The Dollhouse Effect: If you want a location to feel more like a theatre set or a dollhouse, go to the other extreme and use a long telephoto lens, such as a 70–200 mm. It compresses space and makes movement feel much more lateral. And with a shallow depth of field, large parts of the scene can disappear into blur—just as they do in a dream.

The “Slightly Strange” Movement: Try a long zoom while the camera itself stays in place and does not move forwards or backwards. Why does it feel surreal? Because our own eyes never experience movement like this.

The Battle of Light: Harmony Between Bright and Dark

Lighting is the backbone of a surreal image. If the final photograph will be black and white, try to create a roughly balanced amount of light and darkness. Think of it as harmonising the lights.

Step away from your usual habits. One photographer told me that these days he thinks far more deliberately about light, often choosing late afternoon or night.

Use Light as Chaos

Hot Spots: Light one subject brightly while the rest of the scene falls into deep shadow. Instant drama.

Volumetric Light: Bring in mist, haze or fog so that the beams of light become visible.

Patterns of Light and Shadow: Look for patterns created when light breaks through blinds, leaves or moving objects. Yes, even a photograph taken through a bus window can become surreal.

The Mind Game: How to See in Black and White While the World Is in Colour

Imagine standing on a street. The shop windows are colourful, the sky is blue, and your camera shows you a colour image. But in your head, you're already watching a black-and-white scene from 1970s Mexico City—or from the future, or some strange mixture of past and future.

That's the goal.

Go out and find a subject, perhaps shop windows, but don't photograph them from the obvious angle. Crouch down. Shoot from below. Shoot from above. Do anything that feels “a little strange”.

One important tip: don't take hundreds of photographs. Take one. Keep composing until you have the frame you actually want.

In surrealism, there is a strange kind of order inside disorder.

Laboratory Witchcraft: Snapseed, the Black-and-White Machine

Once you've made your colour dream-image, post-production can play a major role. Open Snapseed.

The Ridiculously Simple Conversion

Those three controls alone can already produce a beautiful black-and-white image.

The Magician's Secret: The Bold Outline (for Dark Portraits)

If you're after a dramatic portrait with very dark tonal values, try this more extreme Snapseed trick:

Choose the Black & White tool, apply the Contrast style, brighten the photograph slightly and add contrast.

Colour filter: Choose an orange filter, although it's worth experimenting with the others too.

Curves: Select the RGB channel and pull the curve down. Yes, we're well into surreal territory now.

Outline Magic: Open View Edits / Curves / Brush and invert the mask. Here's the trick: increase the brush percentage to erase the effect and reduce it to restore it. Use this to build a strong outline around the person, then work inwards from the edges.

Final Chord: Use the Vignette tool and adjust both centre and outer brightness to create a circular effect. Finish by adding sharpening and structure with the Details tool.

Collages and Chaos

If that still isn't enough, it's time for some digital alchemy.

Composite Images: Combine two photographs. But be careful: the angle of the sun should match in both images if you want to convince the viewer they were made in the same place.

“Painting with Light”: You can adjust colours afterwards—for example, make lips redder or a shirt bluer—and paint light into the image to push it further towards the surreal.

Body-Part Puzzle, or the Dalí Effect: Photograph different objects and build an altered collage in Photoshop. Or make a Polaroid-style composition in which frames containing different body parts sit against a muted grey background.

Go outside, explore the world, notice what you really see, and if something feels surreal, follow that feeling.

The point is to withhold information from the viewer, just as a dream does.

Happy creating—and remember: 24–50 mm lenses are the prison of reality! 😉

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.