I have really been interested in black & white recently. I just shot a wedding, and could not help changing many of the photos over to black & white, because they just looked better, if you know what I mean. I have also created my first black & white gallery for the website, using some yet unseen photos from the streets of Sanjiang, China.
Not too long back, I listened to an interview with Phillip Jones Griffiths, the honored war photographer who published Vietnam Inc. In watching the interview, he had some interesting comments about black & white photography in photojournalism, some things I had never really thought of.
He was asked, “Do you think that the technology influences the internal composition of the image?”
His answer was enlightening: “I think the big dividing line is between black & white and color”. “Photography really doesn’t work in color…photojournalism if you like…reportage…cadid photography…photographing reality.” He explains that when shooting black & white, we may see the perfect composition, and then just click. If shooting in color, we have to think about that distracting bright red sign in the background. It will draw the attention of the viewer away from the intended subject of the photo. “I think that trying to tame the color that exists in reality, for a photojournalist, is pretty much impossible.”
As for me, I used to just see black & white as “cool”, stylish, or (speaking as if I am a cultured adult) a visually pleasing way to present a scene. And having shot a lot of black & white and developing it in the high school darkroom, I realize it has some wonderful strengths when it comes to contrast and clarity.
I had never thought about the issues color brings up when photographing reality. Phillip Jones Griffiths has some excellent points. Now, I have seen loads of photojournalists who seem to do a pretty good job when it comes to intertwining color and reportage photography. I would guess the war photographers in Iraq may have it pretty good; from what I see, there is not exactly a wide color spectrum in a desert war. And of course, using a colorful object in the midst of a dusty war may be precisely what makes a photo brilliant.
If we shoot digital, we have a unique position in this discussion. We can shoot our photos in color, and then if we want to go black & white, all we need is to apply one of the many, many methods of creating a black & white image from a digital color image, and we are set.
Along with using my digital camera to create the images you see in the Streets of Sanjiang, I also took the excellent opportunity here in Thailand, away from the nasty film and processing available in China, to shoot some black & white film (My first opportunity ever to shoot Kodak TMAX film!). I will have to admit, though, I enjoyed the slides I shot down here in Thailand much more than the black & white. I think the rich, sub-tropical environment lends itself to positive film. Or maybe I am just a sucker for the rich colors of slides.
Great post! I’ve been toying with black and white shots too recently! I’m just having trouble finding out exactly how to post process my photos into black and white (besides the greyscale button). That’s where the learning curve come in in photoshop I guess! Also, I really enjoyed your gallery, the bike shot in particular!
During the editing on those gallery shots, I was trying a few new methods myself. In the past, I have predominately used my raw software (UFRaw) for black & white conversion. This time, though, I was trying some tricks in GIMP, which would not be too different from how other software would work. Check out the GIMP article on converting to black & white if you are interested. If you want something specific for your software, just do some searching on the web and you should find plenty of how-to pages.