Feeling a bit silly today. Does shooting everything in black and white really, really make it better? More interesting? Seems like as long as stuff is black and white it gets an extra dose of fawning. Even though it's not all that hard to do....
There is a contingent of Vloggers on YouTube, and more than one Blogger, who have decided that shooting in monochrome is culturally and aesthetically a step up from shooting stuff in color. They are, as a group, even more emphatic that the Leica M10 Monochrom, the M11 and especially the M9, which is gifted with the "legendary" goodness of a CCD monochrome sensor, offer "clearly" superior black and white performance over the general practice amongst knowledgable photographers of converting from color to monochrome in post processing. A certain Je ne sais quoi. A look that is impossible to replicate in any other fashion.
But rather than something on par with the best of Ansel Adams or Edward Weston; or even Robert Frank, what I've mostly encountered are images of the sides of barns, the sides of shops, the line where ocean waves (in stark black with ruffles of bleached white) roll onto the consistent gray sand of a nothing special beach. Fields of grain. Flowers rendered "exciting" by dint of their contrasty range of tones. Other photos that seem to specialize in having plenty of tones but not enough contrast; and so on.
I do like the way many portraits look when made or constructed as black and white images but it seems that most of the rest of the subject matter is generally sought out as a canvas on which to show off the artist's ability to make color scenes dull and more a banal exercise in showing off an alleged "tonal control."
So, today I tried making a bunch of black and white images with my Q2 camera. It's not "natively" a B&W or "Monochrome" camera but it can be set to show only black and white images in the finder, on the screen and in the final files. It's a fun way to show off detail but other than that it's not really as interesting, in most cases, as the same files might be if handled well in color.
In fact, looking at today's images it struck me: Most monochrome images, taken for the sake of being monochrome (whether the subject calls for it or not!) are like drinking decaffeinated coffee. You keep waiting for that burst of energy you expect but it doesn't arrive. As wall decoration some can be useful because of their basic graphic nature. But like decorating everything in beige a style in search of a reason gets pretty boring pretty quickly.
A few current photographers can pull off working in B&W. Among them are Paul Reid and Alan Schaller. Reid works almost always in portraits and the B&W distills the subject down to their very basics. Visually. Schaller uses black and white and mostly wide angle lenses to work with urban geometry in which people are an element. I could dig around and find a few more but....
Is there really a reason to spend a life time schackled to one look? I don't think so... But Leica sure is making bank on a group of photographers avidly chasing "monochrome" as the secret prize of our chosen art. More power to them
No fancy titles for these but you could always make up your own.
Suggested photo titles;
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fawnable-2
and so on.
"because of their basic graphic nature." I think that's it, right there. I often critique art photos in comparison to painting and drawing. I do that because in most cases, both forms are two-dimensional work, usually meant to hang on walls. But painters can do anything they wish -- B&W, monotone in color, full color, abstraction, etc. So, their choices do mean something, I think, aesthetically, and they most often choose color. Good painters often (not always) work in black and white, in drawings, because of the graphic effect, which is a real thing. And they certainly don't feel self-conscious about it, though there may be a feeling that drawing might be a somewhat lesser form than painting. In a lot of cases, B&W photography seems like a somewhat lesser form than color work...but not always. There's something about portrait work in B&W that seems to give a glow to the skin. It's an abstraction, but often a striking one. The thing that leaves me a bit baffled, as a Pentax Monochrome owner, is why I have one. When I convert to B&W from a Nikon Z7II, you'd have to be a serious photo fascist to find great differences between B&W shots made by the two cameras.
ReplyDeleteI agree with JC. The Pentax Monochrome is sort of tempting, but (a) do I want to spend on a different system, and (b) do I want to be limited to B&W for an entire outing? No. Some scenes need B&W and others to not.
ReplyDeleteKirk, I like your B&W photos more than your color stuff. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteI just picked up a Nikon ZF, a fun, eccentric and quite weird camera. I really like the manual switch on top to click over into black and white mode. I do not recommend the camera to you, however, because it's like a Canon FP met a computer and had a baby. In other words, it's a strange brick.
ReplyDeleteA few months ago I purchased a new but well discounted Lumix G9 on the memories of the lovely images of Iceland you made with your(at the time) G9. Mine is set at ISO100 and RW2(color) but I’ve been converting to B&W and while I’m not the best at processing, those RW2 files are wonderful to work with.
ReplyDeleteFor 23yrs. I used almost exclusively B&W film simply because it was affordable compared to color. So when I went digital having choice was like freedom. A Panasonic pocketable ZR1 was my first stand alone digital camera and was wowed by its color jpgs. Not going back.
All rodeo images were made with the G9:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/146601120@N02/
3 comments:
ReplyDelete1/ Last month needed a creative jolt- so I shot in B&W (ok DNG w/finder in B&W)-- that lasted about a week- as someone noted earlier in the remarks- some images need to be in B&W and others do not
2/A 'good' image is 'good' in B&W or color-converting a 'meh' color image to B&W results in a 'meh' B&W image.
3/Most folks just cannot take a 'good' image color or B&W
One reason for a monochrome camera is the discipline of working under restrictions. Color is a distraction in most images and eliminating it can help a photographer focus on the composition and light. (One can also shoot photographs where the color is essential - Ernst Hass and Jay Maisel come to mind.) Technically, a monochrome camera could achieve higher resolution or dynamic range, depending on how the sensor uses the extra sites not needed for full RGB. Plus you get all the fun of using glass filters. :-)
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