Why do you shoot in monochrome?

For a number of years I shot TriX, HP5, Tmax, what have you, when

shooting out on the street. About a year ago I started asking myself

why am I shooting in black and white. I've been well aware for years

that the vast majority of self-styled street photography gets shot in

black and white and much of what passes for photojournalism tends to

be monochromatric especially when the subject is in an urban setting.

 

Why do we shoot in monochrome? I think a good part of the answer is

that consciously or not, many of us seek to recreate or imitate the

photography we may have looked at when younger- the Winogrand,

Friedlander, Levitt, Evans, etc. monochromes. Monochromes also tend

to look "cooler" to people used to advertising color all around us.

 

But monochromes also tend to mask the lack of facility with light;

what is often offered up is a murky image that the photographer

passes off as arty. When nothing else seems to be creative, hey push

TriX 'till the grain is as big as hail, overexpose or shoot in

contrasty light and presto, Art! (I'm not singling anyone here out,

BTW, I think a lot of the B&W work by the regulars travis, Ray, etc

is quite good, and heavens knows I generate a lot of bad stuff).

 

Sometime about a year ago I made a conscious decision to concentrate

on color transparency work in my style of candid shooting. It made me

look so much more closely at the geometries in a composition. It made

me learn for the first time to use, actually use color as a subject.

It's been quite liberating actually to be able to add the color

element to the palette of subjects that I can shoot. There is a range

of transparency films that let me use grain, push or pull processing,

and with digital scanning and output, I am free from the tyranny of

lousy labs.

 

The point here is I'm curious what you think about why you use

monochrome in candid, street shooting.

<<Why do you shoot in monochrome>>

 

I don't do candid street photography (I wouldn't like it being done to me so I won't do it to others)but I do shoot b&w about 40% of the time, for concerts, weddings/events, even landscapes. It's got a nostalgic look to it, it's a whole different paradigm. There's no problem with color casts from lighting, the high-speed potential is greater than color. Lots of reasons. It's easier to just convert a color image to b&w but I find these rarely work if I didn't shoot it with b&w in mind in the first place.

Because traditional B&W film, correctly processed, lasts about forever. You never know if your subjet will become famous. Here are some 40 year old photos. The prints were made in 2002. Leica III-CK and/or III-F, 35/1.8 Canon, Tri-x.

 

http://www.renericard.org/portraitgallery/kaplan.html

 

My files contain negatives of a young unknown folk singer named Bob Dylan, a young unknown twenty-something female attorney named Janet Reno, etc.

When use b/w I do so because it's a step away from reality yet at the same time it can be perceived as more true to life. Doublethink? Obviously a monochrome image doesn't look like real life, because there's no colour at all. However, most colour images aren't true to life either, as the colours are never quite as you remember them - such as the dayglo grass on my Reala pictures. Therefore the b/w can appear more "honest" because it's not distorting reality; it's rendering the scene as well as it can given its lack of colour (I'll ignore pan film's oversensitivity to blue). B/W is great for portraits because you don't need colour information to tell you what a person looks like (unlike, for instance, a picture of a flower, a sunset or a fishing boat). Most people are somewhere on a narrow scale between pink and brown! This helps you concentrate on their unique features<p>So I'll use b/w for subjects where the shape is the main point of interest, and where the viewer already knows what colour it should be.<p>But face it, most of us also use b/w because (a) only serious photogs do it and (b) we want to produce images that appear timeless, because we know people will still be looking at them years after we're gone ;-)

A B&W image is a greater abstraction, reduction from reality than a color image. One

can always shoot in color and manipulate the image down to B&W, but sometimes the

challenge is to SEE in B&W and reach the photograph from a different direction.

 

B&W films each have their unique texture and quality, as do color films.

 

Godfrey

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<B>Tower Creek</B> Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming<BR>

<I>Leicaflex SL2, 60mm Macro-Elmarit-R</I>

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After 30+ years of using only color slide film I've begun to use B&W film as well. A big part of the reason I'm using B&W is a desire to emphasize the basics of light and form and to get away from the mass-market emphasis on over-saturated color.

A little rhyme for you.

 

When you take there image in color you get a pretty pictures of there clothes. If you take the photo in B&W you get a little glimpse into there soles.

 

Not exactly true but color distracts and competes.

Al Henry -- actually what you said was first said by the great Canadian photographer Ted Grant. He said: "when you shoot in color you remember the color of their clothes, when you shoot in B&W you remember their soul.

This is an interesting question. In years past, I had a full wet darkroom, and shot a lot of B&W. These days, with my darkroom boxed up after a move, I have been shooting mostly color.<P>

 

One thing I have discovered, at least on this site, is that B&W (or perceived B&W) gets instant credibility over color. I have put photos in several of the "no words" threads, only to be surprised to find my lone color shot surrounded by B&W. Just to see if this (the credibility factor) was just something I imagined or real, I have been converting some color shots to B&W with imaging software.<P>

 

This thread <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=005i1K"> Link </a> was interesting to me. I posted a shot that was ignored when I posted it in color in a similar themed thread last year. I converted it to B&W and posted it (subject: the stare) in the running no words thread. This time a couple of people actually posted a couple of accolades for it, with one person commenting on if some famous photographer had shot it, it would be in a museum. I am flattered, but the shot is crap! It is poorly composed, breaks all of the rules and is just one of many throw-aways from a roll of hip-shot s during a street shooting session. What makes it a good shot? Is it because it is NOT in color? Is this �B&W is good / color is bad� a �Leica� thing?

Al,

18 threads below this topic, they were debatiing the reason behind you not posting any pictures in this forum. here you showed us a wonderful series of pictures of rene ricard (love that flying bit mate!) with a hint of bob dylan and reno. i wonder what other treasures are lurking in your darkroom. god bless you (and lucky us) when you finally managed to get hold of that scanner :-)

A.K....<It made me learn for the first time to use, actually use color as a subject>...you've summed up my reason in this sentence. Some amazing work is done in color, and some genres demand it. But in too many photographs if you take away the bright colors (the subject you mention) you are left with a fairly mundane image. As well there are styles of photography (much documentary would fall into this) that suffer from the use of color. A number Salgado's images (whether you like him or not) are very powerful because of the starkness that mono-cromatic treatment gives them...the image forces you to concentrate on the person. The same image in color, with the vibrant jungle foliage as a background would loose all its power...trivialised in essence by the use of color. As well there are some documentary images that would just be too graphic in color. A well know documentary shooter who uses color (I can't for the life of me remember his name...perhaps someone else could help), has a book out on one of the Central American revolutions. Lots of color images of dead people with lots of blood. In B&W it would be palatabe, but in color many find it disgustingly 'real'. Is he doing a service to his cause (bringing attention to a horrific problem) by causing many to look at one or two photos and then close the book in disgust?? These are just a couple of examples of why I shoot in mono-cromatic...nostalgia isn't one of them.

For years, I shot almost everything in black and white, using color only when I was illustrating a magazine article. I didn't use b/w out of nostalgia or because the great street photographers used it. It just seemed appropriate to the kind of photography I was doing. (See the posting I just made: "Street shot.") Lately, however, I've been shooting almost everything in color, enjoying the challenge that attention to color presents. But I've also been troubled by some of the results: in some situations, black and white, it seems to me, would have given me a much stronger image--my recent posting of the kids in the Syracuse fountain is one example. I'm not about to abandon the use of color, but I'll be using it more judiciously. I've just sent off five rolls of b/w for processing. Stay tuned :).

I shoot B&W because after cleaning out my kid's college fund for a Leica just to assuage my desperate need for some sort of social status, it's all I can afford... :-( Besides, since I just sit around in my underwear fondling my camera all day, it really doesn't matter what it's loaded with, does it?

Slightly OT, Bill, but where did you send them? I want to start working in B&W and I am wondering if there is a good processing lab here in Boston or if there is a really good lab somewhere that many members use.

It's easier.

 

Possibly?... Monochrome tends to make the image lay flat as a 2-dimension. It tends toward the abstract (essential). Color creates more depth, making compositional problems more difficult at times. Well maybe.

 

Color often tends to lend itself to color being the subject. Monochrome emphasizes the content of the event. This might not always be true, if color is thought of as closer to reality, it might be better at conveying the real nature of the event.

 

I once heard of a test in which one group was given information aided by color images, the other was given the same information illustrated with monochrome images. The group shown the monochrome images retained the basic information that was being communicated better. I know this is somewhat vague, and I don't recall anything more or how reliable the test was. It sounded logical at the time. ;)

 

I could be wrong (again), but I think black and white film is physically capable of more subtlety in conveying tonal range (light to dark) than color...?

 

There's something beautiful in the richness and look of the tones in monochrome. I love color too, but it seems a little too dressed up to me, when I do it myself. I've used color, and probably will further, but monochrome in general feels more solid for my work.

 

There may be something to be said for the fact monochrome reaches further back into the history of photography than color, and has more references that way. It has deeper roots.

Actually I posted this before (people only say I never post anything when they're trying to imply I never shoot pictures)but it's germaine to this thread so here goes again...Delta 3200 at EI 3200 developed in DD-X; 135/3.4 APO-Telyt @ f/3.4, M7 0.72 (the kind with the flaring rangefinder but it didn't flare even with spotlights)+ 1.25x magnifier, camera on AUTO so I could use f/3.4 and get highest shutter speed possible. I braced my elbows on my knees. Sorry for the crappy scan, it's a flatbed of the print.<div></div>

PS: Interesting thing I just realized, I tend to crop 35mm to square format a lot, and have never cropped a Hasselblad shot to a rectangle.

<I>people only say I never post anything when they're trying to imply I never shoot pictures</I><P>

Bad assumption, Jay. I like to see what kind of pictures people make to see if their recommendations make sense for the kind of pictures I like to make. There's no need to be so defensive.

I've always been of the opinion that everything in a photograph should contribute something towards the final image: composition, light, colour.

 

That means to me that unless the colour of the subject contributes something then I shoot in mono. Personally, like some others have said, I find that it emphasises composition and texture by removing a distraction.

 

So mono is my default - even now that most of what I take is digital.

Jay, you must of had expensive seats! BTW it is a GREAT photo love it.

 

Now if only we can get Al to post his stuff, you know Al you can get a cheap flat bed scanner for a $100 at CompUSA.

 

GS

Removing color is just another way to remove distractions.

I also frame, crop, dodge and burn to focus on the essential.

If I can develop colour negs in my bedroom, I'd do it. I mean, shoot colour.

It ain't buying the scanner, it's getting past my mental blocks about digital "menus". If somebody wants to make a scanner with analog dials I'll be first in line. Maybe a nice oiled teak case with brushed aluminum knobs to match my stereo receiver and turntable ;-)

For longevity, and the timeless, classic beauty of b&w film. I also like what Ray said about deeper roots. That's what it's all about for me. (Sorry about the quality of the scan, I have a horrible flatbed).<div></div>

Economics?

 

A grayscale scan takes up a third of the space of a color one. I cheat, use C41 B&W

film, which scans really well and has almost no grain unless you totally screw up

exposure.

 

Also, I can get 20x30 inch prints done for under half the price of color ones. If

someone else is paying I might shoot E6, depends on the story.

 

Originality/distinctiveness

 

If it's a group exhibition, it's fun to be the only black and white person in it.

 

Bloody mindedness

 

It drives picture editors nuts - that's great, do you have that in colour? I spend too

much time shooting stuff I don't care about in colour, so B&W is a nice change.

 

Bad lighting

 

I hate fluroscent strips. Unless you have the strobes to drown it out, B&W is too easy.

And don't get me started on how insecure people get about their spots when they

know you're using colour.

 

Subject

 

I shoot Israelis in colour, Palestinains in B&W. In northern Europe, if I'm outdoors, the

greyness of most scenes is just the wrong grey for subtle colour, but also the wrong

thing for screaming brightness. But night looks great in colour. Horses for courses.