The Editors

Ok, we’re probably beginning to sound like a broken record but Shutterbug.com once again saw record traffic growth in 2017, smashing the previous year’s total web traffic by nearly 50%. For that, we thank all of you for visiting Shutterbug.com and reading our stories, watching our videos, and sharing your photos in our Galleries.

Despite all the advancements in imaging—including the advent of color and the now dominance of digital—there’s something about classic black-and-white photography that will never go out of style. That’s not to say that just because a photo has been shot or converted to monochrome it’s guaranteed to be a great photo. The choice to go black and white must have some meaningful relationship to the subject matter or scene to be effective. For this assignment, we asked readers to submit their best black-and-white photos that use the dramatic impact of monochrome in a powerful way. Our six favorite images here certainly show just that.

Fine art photography is a broad category of imagery that can include landscapes, cityscapes, macros, wide angles, long exposures, abstracts, portraits, nudes, semi-nudes, black and whites, color photos, surreal photos, hyperreal photos, nature photos, and on and on and on. But what we were looking for with this assignment were simply beautiful or striking images that showed your vision as a photographer. 

Now that 2016 is done and dusted, we’ve had a chance to look back at all the cameras and lenses we reviewed this past year and have chosen ten of our absolute favorites.