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Hi @joshua_ong!
Is this technique often used when subjects and scenes (i.e. landscapes) do not have much colour?
I’d answer that with “sometimes”!
I used to shoot products for a guitar case manufacturer. I shot a lot of black guitar cases :). If the guitar case was solely black and white then, and any color introduced by the camera (chromatic aberration is the technical term) wasn’t true, we’d put the case in black and white to more accurately show the product. So that’s an example of where I might go for black and white where the scene is only black and white (a little like your cat).
However, more often than not, I’m finding that black and white is often very useful when there’s too much color! What I mean by that is sometimes the color detracts rather than adds to the image, and so it is often better removed almost altogether.
Sometimes the landscape’s colors are just bland and don’t look good, so black and white will make the image more interesting.
Sometimes the colors aren’t bad, but the lighting is! I just shot a wedding where people were often moving indoors and outdoors or hanging around in doorways. This is not good for photography because your camera can’t tell what white balance to put where—if someone is standing in a doorway, the inside of the house will look way to yellow while the outside will look way to blue. These undesirable color shifts can be avoided by putting the image in black and white.
From a more artistic perspective though, going back to what I was saying about editing though in a previous discussion, it all depends on the feeling I’m trying to convey with the image. If the color contributes or enhances the feeling I want to convey with the photo, I’ll keep it and sometimes make it more vivid by boosting the saturation and vibrancy in post production. See my sunrise images below.
If, however, the use of color detracts or distracts from the feeling I want to convey with the image, I’ll convert it to black and white (see my schoolbus pictures below).
It all depends on what you’re trying to convey. Find out what will further your “message” if you will, and emphasize it. Find out what is distracting your message, and remove it.
Hope this helps!