Monochrome Pre-Visualisation

Ansel Adams used the word 'pre-visualisation' to describe the act of seeing the finished photograph before you press the shutter. For black and white photography, this means stripping colour from your mental picture of the scene — before you take it — and seeing it in tone only.

This is a learnable skill. It is also a discipline, because colour is the dominant visual mode. We see colour first. We notice a red coat, a yellow bus, a blue sky. In a colour photograph, these elements all play their role. In black and white, none of them exist. What replaces them is contrast: the tonal relationship between light and dark.