Color vs Black and White, the eternal debate

[nikos79]

Now I understand there may be a generational gap at work here, in the sense that for a generation that came of age with the computer, it does make sense to think "does this look better in colour or in black and white," because it grew up with the knowledge that there is a "colour on / colour off" switch that one can use at will (which of course holds true for the older generation who adapted, by choice or necessity, to the new technology). This is not a critic, just a reminder that technology has an influence in how one thinks — even creatively. Here too we are dealing with the knowledge and understanding of the possibilities of the medium. Just differently.

So, yes the technology had dictated the use of black and white vs color in the past.
What about now that the majority of new generation chooses to work with digital where by default we are "forced" to choose color as a primary medium (forgetting the Leica/Pentax monochromes). What should the correct approach be?

 

[nikos79]

You are the artist. If you present your audience with a color photograph it’s not very inviting if you state that is could also be a B&W one.

No, that I agree you make a choice and you stick with it. What I am saying is that nothing prevents you from presenting that photo In B&W for another audience/occasion

Audience for photographs are extremely impatient and will grant you on average 3 seconds attention. So pic your battle wisely. If I look at your picture en try to contemplate what you are telling me the color of the leaves pinpoint me to the autumn season. For me that season is the periode where trees transcend from cauliflower shapes to graphics formed by tree branches and trunks. This notion of transition strengthens the two tree trunk forms that form the frame of the picture. That’s for me a nice aspect of this picture.

Thanks

What I don’t manage to comprehend is the building on the left side with the ship in the background.

That is not a ship it is the road below the park. Not so relevant I agree with the rest of the image but I wanted to get the silhouette of the left tree trunk in the image

I also notice that your style mimics the style what is usually described as pictorialism. I’m not very fond of that period of photography. I like to think that photography can stand its own and doesn’t have to mimic an other art form.``

I also don't like pictorialism and I prefer clear description. I guess the movement of the wind and the long exposure contributed to that effect

 

[TJones]

So, yes the technology had dictated the use of black and white vs color in the past.
What about now that the majority of new generation chooses to work with digital where by default we are "forced" to choose color as a primary medium (forgetting the Leica/Pentax monochromes). What should the correct approach be?

Many digital cameras, including the one built into my phone, allow the user to take black and white photos. No post processing is required to remove color.

Perhaps this is simply a language issue, but do you consider anything that you don’t like to be “bad”? Your dismissal of individual photos and entire photographic styles in this thread are hard to get past.

 

[nikos79]

Many digital cameras, including the one built into my phone, allow the user to take black and white photos. No post processing is required to remove color.

Perhaps this is simply a language issue, but do you consider anything that you don’t like to be “bad”? Your dismissal of individual photos and entire photographic styles in this thread are hard to get past.

No, you got me wrong. Not bad just different. It can be very good commercial, fashion, sports, conceptual, gallery photography for instance.
The photograph I dismissed is perfect "instagram" style. Made to impress and to be reproduced forever.
I am sure if I told the artist please bring me 100 such photos tomorrow with dark melancholic urban landscapes and a minuscule shadow (do not forget the shadow of the person, very important!) I am sure they would respond easily. They have found a way to do it forever and be successful.
Very efficient and good at their own style totally respectful. And if they can also make money out of it, hats off!

 

[nikos79]

Many digital cameras, including the one built into my phone, allow the user to take black and white photos. No post processing is required to remove color.

Yes but the sensor is RGB. If you choose to ignore it is fine

 

[BrianShaw]

Light and most natural scenes are “RGB” also.

 

[nikos79]

Light and most natural scenes are “RGB” also.

They are also 3-dimensional should we print in 3-d then?

 

[Alex Benjamin]

So, yes the technology had dictated the use of black and white vs color in the past.

Dictated is too strong. There were — and still are — many factors at work.

What about now that the majority of new generation chooses to work with digital where by default we are "forced" to choose color as a primary medium (forgetting the Leica/Pentax monochromes). What should the correct approach be?

Nobody is forced to choose. Through the viewfinder, everything appears in colour, whether you are using colour film, black and white film, or a digital camera. The differences lie in how you look at the scene, in how the scene looks to you photographically, and, later on, in the process.

When Koudelka switched to a Leica digital panoramic camera, he was still seeing in black and white, and still expecting a final result that was in every way similar to the one he had on film. The difficulty became — not for him, but for those who handled his digital files — to find a process that made it so his photographs looked like what he expects a Koudelka photograph to look like.

I've never read anything about his passage from film to digital, but I suspect the same could be said of Richard Misrach, this time in colour.

There's no "correct" approach. There's how you see the world, there's how you see the world photographically, and there's the process that's going to take all that and translate or transpose it into a photograph.

It's very simple, which doesn't mean that it's easy. Making a good photograph is extremely difficult.

 

[nikos79]

Dictated is too strong. There were — and still are — many factors at work.



Nobody is forced to choose. Through the viewfinder, everything appears in colour, whether you are using colour film, black and white film, or a digital camera. The differences lie in how you look at the scene, in how the scene looks to you photographically, and, later on, in the process.

When Koudelka switched to a Leica digital panoramic camera, he was still seeing in black and white, and still expecting a final result that was in every way similar to the one he had on film. The difficulty became — not for him, but for those who handled his digital files — to find a process that made it so his photographs looked like what he expects a Koudelka photograph to look like.

I've never read anything about his passage from film to digital, but I suspect the same could be said of Richard Misrach, this time in colour.

There's no "correct" approach. There's how you see the world, there's how you see the world photographically, and there's the process that's going to take all that and translate or transpose it into a photograph.

It's very simple, which doesn't mean that it's easy. Making a good photograph is extremely difficult.

What I meant about the process is that how do you evaluate your photos afterwards?
You evaluate them in color (as they come from your digital camera)? And you later decide whether they work better in color or B&W?
Or you play the game (which is what I was mostly skeptical about throughout this forum) that you switch on/off between color and B&W and decide accordingly whether to keep them or not?

 

[gary mulder]

That is not a ship it is the road below the park. Not so relevant I agree with the rest of the image but I wanted to get the silhouette of the left tree trunk in the image



I also don't like pictorialism and I prefer clear description. I guess the movement of the wind and the long exposure contributed to that effect

Basically do you say they are mistakes ?

 

[nikos79]

Basically do you say they are mistakes ?

Not really but stuff that they wouldn't hurt if they were not there either. You need to make decisions when you frame and most are done instinctively. But I like the image as it is

 

[Arthurwg]

So you're OK saying something like this about someone when they're not around, but you wouldn't say it to their face?

If you did "say it to their face" you'd get in trouble, which was my experience a while back.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

What I meant about the process is that how do you evaluate your photos afterwards?

I'll start where I ended. Making a good photograph is extremely difficult. It takes a lot of work to get there, and it takes a long time to get there — time to learn the instruments you work with, time to learn how photography works, time to figure out what you want to photograph, how you want to photograph it, and why — and it takes a fair amount of luck.

Even for really excellent photographers, success rate is really low. But it does get higher if you've mastered the what, the how and the why. Meaning, amongst other things, understanding what colour figures in the world, what colour does in a photograph, what colour means to you as well as to others, how colour affects people, how a photograph translates colour, etc.

Once you get there, "evaluating" your photo becomes the easy part. And there won't be questions about whether it works better one way or the other, because, ideally, the answer will be obvious.

You'd understand this if you did your own printing, because something similar happens. With experience, you know, very instinctively, in which size enlargement — on 8x10, 11x14, 16x20, etc. — a photo will work "best." Not that they don't work in various sizes, but some you know that they work better big, and some you know that they work better small.

What's interesting is that once you've figure that out, and once you've found a size that works for you in general, you tend to take certain types of photos a certain way because you know you'll print them a certain size. It's not deliberate, a bit unconscious, but it's noticeable. And that's because you understand that size is also part of the process, and part of the impact the photo will have.

 

[Arthurwg]

To me this sounds patronising.

That's an understatement.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Side note: one extraordinary example of an artist understanding the evocative and emotional power of black and white and of colour, and managing to exploit them both in a single work of art, is Tarkovsky in his movie Andrei Rublev.

As a friend of mine once said, if you don't start crying when colour appears at the very end, after three hours of black and white, there's no hope of redemption for you.

 

[GregY]

What I meant about the process is that how do you evaluate your photos afterwards?
You evaluate them in color (as they come from your digital camera)? And you later decide whether they work better in color or B&W?
Or you play the game (which is what I was mostly skeptical about throughout this forum) that you switch on/off between color and B&W and decide accordingly whether to keep them or not?

N79, there are many photographers still who do not use digital cameras.... by the old method of "previsualization".......they imagine the printed image in bw.

 

[nikos79]

N79, there are many photographers still who do not use digital cameras.... by the old method of "previsualization".......they imagine the printed image in bw.

Yes but these photographers have already made the decision before hand carefully and with thought when they rolled the film into the camera.
I am asking more about the ones who wanted to embrace the digital era and suddenly face this dilemma.

 

[koraks]

the ones who wanted to embrace the digital era and suddenly face this dilemma.

Embracing digital in my view involves having all those benefits and flexibility that the medium to exploit in any way you want. For some, this may involve leaving the LCD on the backside of the camera off and going about the process similarly to how one might do it in the darkroom. Some shoot in color and know they want to end up in B&W and know exactly where they want to go with that. Some shoot in color and decide afterwards based on the image in a process of evaluation and reflection how the image works best. That, and about a million other approaches. With film - same thing, just a whole lot less flexibility. The dogma isn't ingrained in the technology. It's in our brains, and the nice thing is that it's not hard-wired. We can get rid of it. It hurts a bit at first, and then it's like a breath of fresh air.

Here's something a wise photographer once told me: "why don't you try to find a little joie de vivre while photographing." I spent a lot of time arguing with that guy before I learned to listen to what he had to say. I think it's probably because he was right much of the time and I just didn't want to admit it.

 

[GregY]

Yes but these photographers have already made the decision before hand carefully and with thought when they rolled the film into the camera.
I am asking more about the ones who wanted to embrace the digital era and suddenly face this dilemma.

N, it's not a dilemma for all. I have a colleague who does a lot of commercial work. He previously worked with large format film. Now he does a lot of his commercial work with MF digital. It's all done with BW as the priority...not a dilemma. Leica also had made Monochrom only cameras. So it's not just something you flip a switch or a mental switch for.

 

[gary mulder]

N79, there are many photographers still who do not use digital cameras.... by the old method of "previsualization".......they imagine the printed image in bw.

Sorry I don’t understand. Way isn’t it possible to previsualise when using a digital camera ? It seems to me rather counterproductive to just take some random shots and look afterwards if you had some luck.
When scouting for my landscape locations I often don’t even take a camera with me. Or just stumble across a nice location doing something different and come back later to take the shot.

 

[BrianShaw]

They are also 3-dimensional should we print in 3-d then?

Why not… stereo photography has a rich history!

 

[GregY]

Sorry I don’t understand. Way isn’t it possible to previsualise when using a digital camera ? It seems to me rather counterproductive to just take some random shots and look afterwards if you had some luck.
When scouting for my landscape locations I often don’t even take a camera with me. Or just stumble across a nice location doing something different and come back later to take the shot.

I'm just saying, that film photographers using black and white, don't just bang out a colour photo and then hit the convert button. They have an idea of what their photos will look like....choose which film, which filters....
N79 asks is it a dilemma....
You're absolutely right "It seems to me rather counterproductive to just take some random shots and look afterwards if you had some luck."
....but that seems to be what N79 thinks the process is.

 

[MattKing]

The context was a bit different, but I'll always remember something that my Dad said to me.
"There are far more really good photographs taken with Instamatics than all the fancy SLRs and expensive rangefinders put together".
While that was about camera equipment, it is true about photography in general.
Photography aimed at the artistic impression market is an inconsequentially tiny niche within a far larger, far more robust communicative human endeavour.
It is an interesting niche, but still a tiny one.
And whether or not something is successful in that niche has almost nothing to do with whether it is good, bad or mediocre.

 

[GregY]

The context was a bit different, but I'll always remember something that my Dad said to me.
"There are far more really good photographs taken with Instamatics than all the fancy SLRs and expensive rangefinders put together".
While that was about camera equipment, it is true about photography in general.
Photography aimed at the artistic impression market is an inconsequentially tiny niche within a far larger, far more robust communicative human endeavour.
It is an interesting niche, but still a tiny one.
And whether or not something is successful in that niche has almost nothing to do with whether it is good, bad or mediocre.

That's a good point. It seems to me at times that N79 asks questions that show that he is considering things more deeply than others might....some see "much ado about nothing."

 

[Milpool]

This thread has a great pattern.