Otsego Lake in Cooperstown, NY is one of the most picturesque places in our part of the state. I spend a lot of time photographing various locations around the lake, in all seasons, and all weather. This month I have been concentrating on black and white images, and I captured this image one afternoon.
I love the character of this old dock. In color, this image would belong to a specific season. The green of the hillside, the blue-grey of the water, and the warm or cool cast of the light would betray whether it’s August, or October.
But in black and white, those clues fall away. The dock becomes less about when I stood there, and more about how many others have stood in the same place. It could be 1925, or 2025. The boards are worn in the same way, the ripples on the water move in patterns that haven’t changed. What remains is the scene itself.
The dock reminds me that monochrome breaks the ties of an image with the present. But sometimes, it also pulls the past back into focus.
Much of my photography has always been about recording moments that might otherwise go unseen. The quiet moments, things that risk being forgotten. Black and white image sometimes changes that mission. Instead of anchoring a scene to a single season or day, it suspends it. The photograph becomes less about when it was made, less about the moment, and more about the subject itself.
In a box of negatives that I had stored away for decades, I found a frame of a train I photographed more than thirty years ago. I scanned it recently, expecting it to look like a relic, something obviously dated. Instead, the tones gave it the same presence as the dock photo I took just weeks ago. The grain is there, of course, but the image itself doesn’t feel old. It feels alive, suspended somewhere outside of time.The dock reminds me that monochrome breaks the ties of an image with the present. But sometimes, it also pulls the past back into focus.
Where color would anchor the train in its era, the painted logos of the train, the seasonal light and colors in the surrounding landscape, and the yellowing cast of film stock, black and white allows it to keep moving forward. A moment I once thought I had saved is no longer tied to the day it happened. It belongs to every day.
And then there are places like the forest. Standing among the trees at sunset, I noticed a patch of ferns catching the last light of the day, their fronds glowing against the shadowed ground. In black and white, they feel timeless. The photograph feels less like a record of a single day and more like a reminder of how growth repeats itself, season after season, unchanged.
The dock, the train, the ferns. Present, past, and future, each one reminding me that black and white photography doesn’t only simplify what we see. It blurs the line between memory and presence, allowing an image to step outside of time.
This month of shooting in only black and white has shown me that without color, I pay closer attention: to the shapes that hold a scene together, the textures that give it weight, and the way some images feel timeless, as if they could have been made yesterday or decades ago. These lessons will stay with me even as I return to color, reminders to notice carefully, and to make photographs that carry meaning beyond the moment they were made. And the biggest take-away this month, is that I am going to shoot MORE black and white.
✅ Where to Find Me
You can find more of my work on the web at: Simmons Photography
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Well said! I think there is a black and white post brewing in my brain. Definitely something I plan to shoot way more of and I already shoot it a lot.
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.