Beautiful Sunrises Sunsets this week - but I shoot B&W

Thomas Bertilsson

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chuck94022

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Don't drag the color along

So, a couple of weeks ago I camped in a very cold area (-10C plus strong winds), woke up to clear and cold, and hiked my 4x5 to the spot I wanted to capture a particular mountain and frozen water scene. This wasn't a sunrise, but might as well have been. Point is, I saw it in B&W, wanted it in B&W, shot it in B&W.

But, I also had some Velvia loaded up, in my pack. So I took a shot with Velvia too, while everything was still locked down and ready. Why not?

Developed the B&W, sent the Velvia to my local commercial processor. As soon as I had a dry negative, I spent hours and hours over 3 days perfecting my B&W vision. Finally got it right. (I'm on an assignment in China, don't have my darkroom, so I won't discuss how I perfected it, which is beside the point.) I did nothing but scan the Velvia. Nothing. To me it was just a snapshot. Moved me not one inch.

Showed the B&W to my wife. She said she liked it. Made me feel pretty good. (Got a bunch of compliments from others that saw it too. Lots of ooo's and ah's.) Then I showed my wife the Velvia shot. She said "I like this one better." Grrrrrrr...

I'm not even showing anyone else the color shot. And that's the last time I'll show anybody a color version of a B&W vision...
 

benjiboy

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Steve Smith said:
I knew there has to be a solution somewhere!


Steve.
Click to expand...
If the O.P's "vision" only sees sunrises and sunsets in terms of colour and making chocolate box images of it, and can't "see" it in monochrome, however simplistic my answer may seem on the face of it, what other practical options are they ?
 
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Bill Burk

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Great story chuck94022!

This is exactly what I am worried about.

Jeff,

Beautiful shots.
 

steven_e007

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chuck94022 said:
Showed the B&W to my wife. She said she liked it. Made me feel pretty good. (Got a bunch of compliments from others that saw it too. Lots of ooo's and ah's.) Then I showed my wife the Velvia shot. She said "I like this one better." Grrrrrrr...
Click to expand...

Reminds me of a set of B & W prints I made of some waterfalls in Wales one summer. I showed my Sister:

"Oh, what nice scenery. It wouldn't it have looked lovely in colour!"
 

jeffreyg

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Bill,

Thank you.

I wouldn't worry ...different strokes for different folks. A number of years ago I was invited to have a photograph of a particular piece in the Art in Public Places for an anniversary of that program. I photographed it with 4x5 format and couldn't decide which of four images to use so I spent very many hours to print all four negatives on one piece of paper in the required scale as they were going to have rear illuminated transparencies. Since the tonal separation was very subtle I also took some 4x5 color transparencies at the same time and spent 30 minutes round trip to the local lab. As you might have guessed the person incharge wanted to use the color. I insisted they use the B&W as long as they could be accurately reproduced. I was pleasantly pleased that they used the B&W.

Jeff
 

Worker 11811

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Last week, I attended a lecture by Hank O'Neal.
http://www.hankoneal.com

During the talk, he discussed some of his conversations with Berenice Abbott. He said that there were times when she told him not to shoot in color even though he argued that a given photo "needed" to be in color. The rationale was thus:

When you take a photograph, you are compressing an image down from the real world, in three dimensions to a flat, 2-D likeness. Because of this, a photograph can easily become "cluttered" with too much information. Shooting in black and white allows the photographer to distill the image down to its essential components without having to look through the clutter of color information.

He did allude to the fact that some photos call for color but the thrust of the argument was that, to be a good photographer, you must learn how to shoot black and white in order to learn how to distill an image down to its essential elements.

He also picked on a couple of the digitographers in the crowd and told them that it is vital for them to learn how to shoot with film if they want to progress in photography. But that's a different story.
 

markbarendt

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chuck94022 said:
Showed the B&W to my wife. She said she liked it. Made me feel pretty good. (Got a bunch of compliments from others that saw it too. Lots of ooo's and ah's.) Then I showed my wife the Velvia shot. She said "I like this one better." Grrrrrrr...
Click to expand...

I get that all the time with my wife. She goes a step farther and asks to see the color one.

I do find that portraits & details work better for me in B&W than landscapes do, of course there are exceptions.

Another thing I've been playing with is printing my color negs on B&W paper. I've actually been pleasantly surprised so far.
 

naeroscatu

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Shot this last spring - Bluffer's Park on the shores of Lake Ontario

 
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