Building Exterior on East Van Buren Street, Chicago, IL

I have not done too much work with B&W, but after looking at old photographs taken by my father from the 1960s and 1970s in B&W, I started to appreciate them more. There is something about the stark contrast of values that appeals to me. When I got into digital photography, strong, bright, punchy, and saturated color work was where I gravitated towards, but now I am discovering that B&W has much to offer. Most of the B&W photos in my portfolio were conversion from a color original. What I find is that by distilling the image to tonal values, much more detail can be brought out. The sharpness and contrasts that normally are hidden in a color image can be much more easily discernible in a B&W conversion of the same image.

 

What I am trying to emphasize in this image is the strong vertical line of the corner of the building contrasted to the strong diagonal lines from the shadows from the fire escape. Although this took some playing with and cropping, it looks good, I think. The only thing that I could not do is adjust the way the windows lean at an odd angle to the rest of the frame. Maybe some more judicious cropping can improve this composition.

I have not done too much work with B&W, but after looking at old

photographs taken by my father from the 1960s and 1970s in B&W, I

started to appreciate them more. There is something about the stark

contrast of values that appeals to me. When I got into digital

photography, strong, bright, punchy, and saturated color work was

where I gravitated towards, but now I am discovering that B&W has much

to offer. Most of the B&W photos in my portfolio were conversion from

a color original. What I find is that by distilling the image to tonal

values, much more detail can be brought out. The sharpness and

contrasts that normally are hidden in a color image can be much more

easily discernible in a B&W conversion of the same image.

 

What I am trying to emphasize in this image is the strong vertical

line of the corner of the building contrasted to the strong diagonal

lines from the shadows from the fire escape. Although this took some

playing with and cropping, it looks good, I think. The only thing that

I could not do is adjust the way the windows lean at an odd angle to

the rest of the frame. Maybe some more judicious cropping can improve

this composition.

Very good contrast and an efficient way to use shadows. Nice to see such a good work on B&W.

I just posted a couple of photos that are similar in design to this. I only wish they were this good. The lighting contrast between the two different sides of the building set this apart from many other photos using shadows from fire escapes. Great work. JR