Illuminating imagery.
Between 1968 and 1976 I photographed mostly in black and white because that’s what I could afford. Black and white photography can be more challenging than color since the impact of the image depends wholly on its composition and tonality. But I think this “limitation” also creates a more direct emotional connection between the image and the viewer.
So, I’m experimenting with B & W versions of color images I shot during 2016. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
There is much more to see and photograph than Zion and Bryce Canyon in southern Utah. Grand Staircase—Escalante National Monument (not Park) occupies much of south central Utah—vast and less dramatic … [Read More...]
We photographed another two days at Bryce. This park couldn't be more different than Zion—except for the color of the rock. At more than 8000 feet above sea level our dawn shots were … [Read More...]
In November 2017 my friends, Jerry, Joel, Dennis, and I traveled to southwestern Utah and photographed two days at Zion National Park. Autumn was almost over and hints of winter lurked in the … [Read More...]
I think B&W, because it is associated with old photos immediately lends a kind of historicity to any such photo, which generally, but not always, also gives it a dignity that it might not otherwise have. Its artificiality relative to the verisimiltude of color photos also gives it the cachet of art quite readily. I think also the landscape photos here recall the iconic photos of Ansel Adams, again touching back to an earlier era, especially for those of us , I suppose old enough to recall the near-ubiquity of Adams’s images in our culture and so we can’t not see echoes of Adams’s work in such pictures.
Which is a very nice way of stating the fact that we’re old, Andy! I’m not consciously thinking about Adams, much less his zone system, when converting color images to B&W, but I take your point.