Black and White in Sports Photography: A Personal Selection
Sport happens in a blur of colour. Jersey reds, turf greens, stadium lights. Yet some of the most enduring images in sporting history are stripped of colour altogether. Black and white photography occupies a strange and stubborn corner of the sports visual canon. Monochrome remains a deliberate choice. It is a way of telling the story differently, not a relic of older technology. For a personal sports photography site built around Queen's University Golden Gaels football, athletics, and Canadian university competition, monochrome has become one of the most rewarding ways to capture the human drama of competition.
I shoot and edit from Australia, where sport lives in a noisy, sun-baked palette. Australian football at the MCG, AFLW clashes at Whitten Oval, and Test cricket summers all demand a particular kind of eye. Yet the appeal of black and white crosses hemispheres. Whether the game is rugby league in Brisbane, athletics in Kingston, or a varsity meet on a windswept autumn afternoon, removing the colour wheel frees the photographer to focus on gesture, light, and the architecture of bodies in space.
Why Monochrome Still Resonates
Monochrome has survived every technological shift from glass plates to mirrorless cameras because it answers a need that colour photography sometimes misses. It slows the eye. It pulls the viewer toward the bones of the image: line, shadow, contour, and the weight of a moment. A colour photograph can dazzle on first glance and fade on second viewing. A monochrome photograph often does the opposite. It rewards a longer look and holds its ground across decades. For a photographer building a long archive rather than chasing a single viral frame, that durability matters.
There is also a question of taste. Many of the most photographed sporting moments of the twentieth century were captured in black and white for the simple reason that colour film was not yet standard in newsrooms. Those images shaped how the public remembers the athletes involved. When a contemporary photographer chooses monochrome, they are writing into that established visual vocabulary. The choice says something about respect for craft and a preference for storytelling over spectacle.
Stripping Away the Visual Clutter
Colour is information. It tells us about team allegiance, weather conditions, and brand identity. In an AFL game, the difference between navy and charcoal jumpers can be the whole story. But when the goal umpire signals and a player wheels away, the moment is fundamentally about shape, balance, and the geometry of an outstretched arm. Black and white photography leans hard into that geometry. By removing the visual noise of competing hues, monochrome asks the viewer to slow down and read the image as composition rather than as a snapshot.
On a bright afternoon at the Gabba, with fifty shades of green in the outfield and a sea of multicoloured jerseys, a colour photograph can feel like a postcard. A monochrome version of the same scene becomes a study in tone. The whites of the players' boots, the shadows in the crease, the grit on a batter's cheek: these details emerge because the surrounding colour is no longer shouting for attention. Photographers working in Brisbane's summer humidity know this instinctively. When the air is thick and the light is harsh, monochrome can rescue a frame that would otherwise look flat in colour.
Grain, Sweat, and Texture
Monochrome prints have a tactile quality that colour rarely achieves. Grain becomes part of the story rather than a flaw to be cleaned up. In sports photography, that grain mirrors the physical effort on display. The texture of a sprinter's calves, the spray of water from a hurdler's footfall, the crisscross of laces on a footy boot all gain presence when the image is reduced to tones. It is a visual language that suits athletes who are pushing past comfort, when veins stand out and faces contort.
Australian photographers have always had an interesting relationship with grain, partly because of the local love of film in the 1970s and 80s. Many older shooters at suburban rugby matches still appreciate the grit of a high-ISO Tri-X frame. Even with modern sensors, pushing the processing to retain grain gives a contemporary image something of that older feel. A close-up of a forward's jaw after a contested mark, the foam of a half-time towel on a player's shoulder, or the chalk dust on a bowler's hands all read better in monochrome because the texture carries the narrative.
From the MCG to Local Fields
Working between hemispheres gives a photographer an unusual perspective on the role of monochrome. In Australia, the major codes all have their own visual cultures. Australian Rules football brings wide-open spaces and dramatic skies. Rugby league, from Brisbane to the NSW central coast, offers a tighter, more muscular geometry. The Big Bash and Shield cricket matches provide long, languid hours where a single decisive frame can tell the whole story. Each of these formats has produced its own iconic monochrome work over the decades.
Australian audiences are steeped in the history of black and white sports imagery. The old Football Record covers, the Fairfax and News Ltd archives, and the grainy prints in suburban clubrooms all share a common visual grammar. When a photographer walks into a local cricket club in Adelaide or a rugby league canteen in western Sydney, the monochrome aesthetic is already understood. It feels less like a stylistic flourish and more like a continuation of how Australians have always remembered their sport.
The Differences Between Monochrome and Colour Work
Choosing between monochrome and colour is rarely a technical decision. It is a tonal and emotional one. Each approach has its strengths, its limitations, and its preferred subjects. A useful way to weigh them up is side by side.
| Aspect | Monochrome | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| Mood | Timeless, emotional, sometimes melancholy | Immediate, vibrant, contemporary |
| Visual clutter | Removed, focus on shape and light | High, can distract from subject |
| Storytelling | Universal, transcends the moment | Specific, ties the image to a place and era |
| Texture | Emphasised, grain reads as feeling | Often flattened by competing hues |
| Skin and sweat | Reads naturally through highlight and shadow | Can look uneven under mixed lighting |
| Print and display | Classic, gallery-friendly | Strong in digital and modern media |
| Best fit | Studies of effort, emotion, geometry | Action shots that depend on team identity |
The table is not a verdict. A great sports photograph can be either, and the same photographer will switch between the two depending on the day, the light, and the story. What monochrome offers is a deliberate constraint. That constraint often produces images with a longer shelf life, the kind that look as compelling twenty years on as they did the day they were shot.
Lessons from a Triple Jump Sequence
The case for monochrome shows up most clearly in sequences where motion is broken into stages. A long jump, a high jump approach, or a triple jump run-up gives the photographer a chance to track the arc of an athlete through space. Colour tends to fragment the sequence because each frame competes with the next in saturation and tint. Monochrome binds the frames together as a single study. The chalk line on the runway, the angle of the planted foot, the hang time in the air: these become the story.
One recent example made this point vividly. The full behind-the-lens-shooting-a-triple-jump-sequence-at-the-queen-s-track-meet write-up from the Queen's track meet walks through the camera choices, the framing decisions, and the editing decisions that shaped that set. Reading it back, the most useful lesson was how monochrome cut through the busy banners and wind-sock colours of a mid-autumn meet. The athlete became the only thing on the page.
Building a Personal Monochrome Selection
A personal selection is not the same as a portfolio. A portfolio is meant to show range, technical skill, and breadth. A selection is meant to show taste, point of view, and a willingness to leave things out. For a photographer working across Canadian university sport and Australian domestic competition, a monochrome selection is a way of saying something about both. The same athlete in Kingston and the same athlete in Brisbane can read as one body of work when the colour is removed.
Building such a set takes discipline. It is tempting to colourise everything in post, especially when the modern tools make it easy. The trick is to shoot with monochrome in mind from the start: choosing light that flatters, framing that holds without colour cues, and moments that survive the loss of red and blue. Editing then becomes a matter of contrast, dodge, and burn rather than hue shifts. Over time, the selection becomes a record of the photographer's eye rather than a tour of every event.
The full archive at Golden Gaels Photos holds thousands of frames from Queen's University football, athletics, and Canadian university competition, alongside a growing collection of personal projects. Browse by event, by athlete, or by season, and look for the monochrome selections that have shaped the site's tone over the years. If a frame catches your eye for personal, non-commercial use, please credit the photographer and respect the copyright. Drop a note through the site if you have a story to share or a frame you would like to see in the archive.