I found this piece fascinating. Great shots! Even though I’m a photography fan and a former photo editor (among other hats) at a travel magazine, I hadn’t thought about the distinctions between black & white and color other than the obvious hues or lack thereof. I can see now how black & white veils time and forces closer attention to the overall subject than does the color and makes the image more resonant. There’s less distraction and more focus with the black and white.
By the way, I write about travel, life and work. Love to take photos on my trips but not a pro by any means.
Thank you! I am not a pro either, but have been concentrating on shooting black and white for a few weeks, and writing about some of my observations. I definitely want to work more with black and white than I have in the past.
That’s cool. The publication I mentioned was loaded with color, but we did a feature on the Delta Blues country of Mississippi in black & white. It was outstanding! I can remember some of those images as if they were published yesterday. Are there certain subjects that lend themselves to black & white and some not at all?
Obvious subjects are scenes that don’t have a lot of color of course. However I’ve found that other scenes that I leaned heavy on color can also work in black and white, depending on what you want to highlight. Mute the colors and show off the shadows shapes and textures and you have a completely different image. With a different story. I used to shoot black and white mostly in fall and winter, but after forcing myself to shoot all monochrome for the month of August, m open to new possibilities.
It’s like a world within a world. We can see what’s hiding in plain sight as a result of our eyes being drawn to the colors. There’s a reveal behind the usual day-to-day. Those of us on the hunt for discovery love this kind of thing. Our brains do too. They love surprises.
Nice work, Bob. It's nice to hear your thoughts on the timelessness of black and white. To me it brings the timeless and spotlight all in one. You can really direct someone's focus to a subject in black and white. It's primarily what I shoot. People sometimes tell me to shoot more color, but I see colors everywhere. I just want to strip it all away to the bare bones.
I found this piece fascinating. Great shots! Even though I’m a photography fan and a former photo editor (among other hats) at a travel magazine, I hadn’t thought about the distinctions between black & white and color other than the obvious hues or lack thereof. I can see now how black & white veils time and forces closer attention to the overall subject than does the color and makes the image more resonant. There’s less distraction and more focus with the black and white.
By the way, I write about travel, life and work. Love to take photos on my trips but not a pro by any means.
Thank you! I am not a pro either, but have been concentrating on shooting black and white for a few weeks, and writing about some of my observations. I definitely want to work more with black and white than I have in the past.
That’s cool. The publication I mentioned was loaded with color, but we did a feature on the Delta Blues country of Mississippi in black & white. It was outstanding! I can remember some of those images as if they were published yesterday. Are there certain subjects that lend themselves to black & white and some not at all?
Obvious subjects are scenes that don’t have a lot of color of course. However I’ve found that other scenes that I leaned heavy on color can also work in black and white, depending on what you want to highlight. Mute the colors and show off the shadows shapes and textures and you have a completely different image. With a different story. I used to shoot black and white mostly in fall and winter, but after forcing myself to shoot all monochrome for the month of August, m open to new possibilities.
It’s like a world within a world. We can see what’s hiding in plain sight as a result of our eyes being drawn to the colors. There’s a reveal behind the usual day-to-day. Those of us on the hunt for discovery love this kind of thing. Our brains do too. They love surprises.
Nice work, Bob. It's nice to hear your thoughts on the timelessness of black and white. To me it brings the timeless and spotlight all in one. You can really direct someone's focus to a subject in black and white. It's primarily what I shoot. People sometimes tell me to shoot more color, but I see colors everywhere. I just want to strip it all away to the bare bones.
Exactly! The color is sometimes the obvious part that stops people from seeing what else is there.