An urge has come, galloping over the horizon, stones flying, a bowl of dust swirling in its wake. Its name is Monochrome.
My interest was sparked while I was helping a friend choose her new camera. Shooting black & white was one of her requirements and it made me think about my own experience in the medium. In short, hardly any. Unlike Peter, I have no traditional background in photography although I did play about in the darkroom with a fair bit of monochrome in the early seventies. However that was through necessity rather than choice and because, as a film processor, I could lay my hands on free film, mostly unused tail-ends of 35mm natural history film shoots. I have also lit drama productions in a monochrome film noire style but never in pure chroma-free gloriousness.
So I've started to trawl through the thousands of images that infest my hard drive to see which have the potential to make it into the pantheon of black & white. What I'm looking for is simplicity, structure and gradation. The staircase yesterday probably fulfilled two of those and today's hopefully all three.
5 comments:
I am always impressed by how a photograph that is simple in subject matter can be so rich in story. Black and white photos invite imagination. This one is top-notch.
Thanks, Pauline. It taken in the calm before the storm, the one in Burlington where we had a close call with a bolt of lightning. Could have been a different story.
I do love monochrome.... this picture is so tranquil, it is as if it was meant to be black and white, as if color would disturb the peacefulness of the scene. Very nice, Dave.
Thanks, Susan. The original image was a sullen yellow colour with the only accent being the dark blue of the hull of the boat so it lent itself to being monochromed (if there is such a word)
Nice one Dave. Someone once said B&W is the colour of photography. Don't fully agree but, like that art exercise where you have to pain in monochrome, it teaches so much about balance and contrast.
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