What do you do when you see the world in colour?

Huss · Aug 8, 2019

The realization has hit me that I am a colour film photographer. I see the world in colour. I love colour. I seek it out. Almost all my work has been in colour, so much so that it took me forever to finish my last roll of B&W film because the entire time I wished I had colour in that camera. And when I got the results back, I again wished I took them with colour film.
Now my colour film stash is dwindling, but my freezer is full of 35mm and mainly 120 B&W emulsions. What to do with them? Sell them off? Trade them for colour film?
I'm not even fussy with colour, I love Fuji C200! I love Kodak ProImage 100! Superia 400? Definitely! Portra? Ok but not a big deal to me. I prefer multiple rolls of the cheap excellent stuff than one of the expensive excellent stuff!

Arklatexian · Aug 8, 2019

Huss said:
The realization has hit me that I am a colour film photographer. I see the world in colour. I love colour. I seek it out. Almost all my work has been in colour, so much so that it took me forever to finish my last roll of B&W film because the entire time I wished I had colour in that camera. And when I got the results back, I again wished I took them with colour film.
Now my colour film stash is dwindling, but my freezer is full of 35mm and mainly 120 B&W emulsions. What to do with them? Sell them off? Trade them for colour film?
I'm not even fussy with colour, I love Fuji C200! I love Kodak ProImage 100! Superia 400? Definitely! Portra? Ok but not a big deal to me. I prefer multiple rolls of the cheap excellent stuff than one of the expensive excellent stuff!

If I was this fond of color, I think I would be shooting "digital" and forget trying to use color film. I have a little Canon Digital camera that makes better color prints than I ever got with film from Kodak's or anyone else's lab. I am talking about color prints, not color slides (Kodachrome and E6 films) Those were a different story but prints from slides were not as good as color prints from my digital. Sorry you don't care for Black & White film photography. To me, that "IS" photography. You do realize, of course, that almost everything regarding photography in "photrio" is personal opinion. By the way, why didn't you just pull the B&W out of your camera and load it with color. You are the boss, not your camera.......Regards!

Theo Sulphate · Aug 8, 2019

Give B&W a try. Maybe do night shots where color is less (?) important - or at least less distinct.

Shapes and shadow are best in B&W, as is architecture, in my opinion.

My experience was the opposite. I couldn't afford to buy film, so my friend gave me bulk loads of B&W film that he didn't like (Versapan - rebranded Agfa, I think). So for 15 years I made photos in B&W. All my photos of Venice, Ocean Park, Santa Monica, and downtown L.A. are in B&W, though my memories are not.

But now my photography is 90% color.

MattKing · Aug 8, 2019

I still have access to good labs, so I can switch back and forth at will.
And at least a few people here on Photrio show that printing colour yourself is quite practical.

Sirius Glass · Aug 8, 2019

I too started out as you did concentrating on color slides. Later on I started dabbling with black & white. As I did more black & white, I realized that if I first photographed a subject or location in color, if I then changed to black & white I saw the same subject or area in a completely different way. After taking photographs with one and then the other, I found I would then go back with the first and then the second again, because I had seen so much more.

StepheKoontz · Aug 8, 2019

I have found when shooting B&W I look at the world very differently than when shooting color. I have learned to see the light, not the physical things the light is reflecting off of that we think we are photographing. All we are doing is recording light.

That said I never try to shoot color and B&W on the same day. It's a totally different type of photography IMHO.

koraks · Aug 8, 2019

Huss said:
The realization has hit me that I am a colour film photographer. I see the world in colour.

Same here. That is, overall, I shoot maybe 50/50 color/b&w, but only b&w is just too limiting for me. Sometimes, it's really the colors that make the image. I'm having a blast shooting color negative and printing onto RA4 at home. Is digital better? Maybe, but it's too clean and clinical for my taste, and I just don't enjoy the digital work flow. Like you, I enjoy shooting the cheap and cheerful Fuji stocks (lots of very expired Superia 200), but I very much appreciate the more premium stocks of Kodak; Ektar and more recently Portra. Pro Image works too for me, although it's a bit of a stuck in the middle film - more costly than expired Superia, but not necessarily better for my purposes. Less grain than Superia 200, which is its raison d'etre in my fridge.

Long story short - do as you please. If you like color, shoot color. If you like cheap film, so much the better (for your wallet)!

Sell the b&w off, or put it in the fridge until the time comes when you possibly re-appreciate b&w.

Willyekerslike · Aug 8, 2019

Huss said:
Almost all my work has been in colour, so much so that it took me forever to finish my last roll of B&W film because the entire time I wished I had colour in that camera

I feel for you you brother. I spent my teenage years with just the one camera and the pains I suffered trying to decide which film to put in the camera. It seemed to me that no matter what I chose it was always the wrong one. I have grown up a bit since then and now just grab film from the bag I think is best for the situation, composition and light. I must admit it started to get a bit easier when I aquired a second camera. Of course I now have the other problem, which of the 40+ cameras to use and which format. They do say that life is not easy.......

jim10219 · Aug 8, 2019

Color film is useful for highlighting the relationships of color, obviously. Black and white film is useful for highlighting the relationships of form and texture. So quite often, a scene that works well with one, won't work so well with the other (though sometimes it will). You just have to learn to see things a bit differently to appreciate black and white film and take full advantage of it. Look for textures, patterns, balances of the "weight" of the light, and relationships of shapes that you like and try to figure out ways to exploit them in your imagery. It's good practice that'll make you a better photographer in the long run because you'll be able to apply what you learned to your old style.

So I say, use it up and learn from the experience. It doesn't need to become your new favorite or anything. Just treat it as a learning experiment.

eddie · Aug 8, 2019

You can always hand-paint your black and whites.

Patrick Robert James · Aug 8, 2019

I shoot almost all black and white, but have perfect color vision. Go figure....

StepheKoontz · Aug 8, 2019

Willyekerslike said:
Of course I now have the other problem, which of the 40+ cameras to use and which format. They do say that life is not easy.......

And I feel your pain lol.

1kgcoffee · Aug 8, 2019

I'm in the boat as you Huss. Not just colour film, but the prints that come after, traditional RA-4 done optically. It's incredibly satisfying and produces results with a lot more soul than digital.

Sometimes we need a break from colour. Not everything is easy to reproduce the way we want in colour. Sometimes colours clash. Sometimes colours distract from the subject. Keep the black and white film and use it to experiment with different textures and compositions. Do long exposures. I am primarily a colour shooter but you will find a good reserve of various black and white films in my fridge.

awty · Aug 9, 2019

I may see the world in colour but my dreams are in monochrome.
It takes me about 18 month to stock pile enough colour film to warrant buying a c41 kit to process.
As the Italian camera repair man says..
"The colour distracts you from the image, black and white is, true photography is black and white"
http://digg.com/video/italy-camera-repair

MattKing · Aug 9, 2019

I love photographing in the forests.
Sometimes, black and white is perfect:

but other times, you need colour.

KN4SMF · Aug 9, 2019

There is no way of knowing or describing if anybody even sees colors the same way. If I see red as red, somebody else may see what I do as blue, or whatever. But since they have always seen it that way, we are in complete agreement that red is "red". But certainly black and white are universal. The charm and mood of the so called film noir movies would be completely lost if they had been filmed in color. In fact, those movies would never have achieved the long lasting regard that they do. The Andy Griffith show is a perfect example of the many programs that went to heck in a handbasket when Hollywood switched to color in the mid 60's.

Andrew O'Neill · Aug 9, 2019

I work mainly in monochromatic. My drawing and printmaking is monochromatic, so too is my photography. Sometimes I shoot colour when I anticipate a tri-colour gum. But 9 times out of 10 it's black and white.

Bill Burk · Aug 9, 2019

Trade the black and white for more color film.

I started out shooting a mix of color and black and white. There was a weird discontinuity in my slide shows when I had a roll of black and white in the camera for a day.

But some trips I would shoot all black and white and I found I was happier with all black and white, so I stuck with that.

Huss · Aug 9, 2019

Excellent replies. Apart from the one joker saying colour should be shot on digital. Gross!
I like the TMAX3200 because it makes my Brooks Veriwide useable in far more conditions, and that huge negative hides the grain.
But the rest of the time I just do much better with colour.

Agulliver · Aug 9, 2019

We all see differently of course....I shoot both colour and B&W and even.....whisper it...digital....I find that each colour film renders a scene differently, and that's part of the fun of shooting colour film. On a recent trip to Dorset I had a camera loaded with Color Plus, another with Ektar and a further loaded with Fomapan 200 B&W. I was taking walks in woods and on sandy tracks in the hills, viewing landscapes, visiting Swanage town and so on....shooting different things depending on what I saw.

If you really don't think you'll use much B&W, then take an inventory and consider selling or trading at least some of it for some colour film. Do you have anything rare or no longer in production? If so, consider its value to you in terms of money you could get to buy colour film....but also the fact that it may be your last chance to own that particular film....and make a choice. I once sold two rolls of 127 Efke KB100 because I thought I'd never use them....just a year later regretted it even though I made enough to buy four brand new rolls of Ilford FP4+

Theo Sulphate · Aug 9, 2019

Here's an idea: pick just a single subject where it's texture, shape, or other aspect of its form is interesting, and photograph that in B&W. Photograph it over time and from different angles, or different portions of it. It need not be just one object, but perhaps numerous examples of the subject.

For example: surf against rocks, light on a mountainside, a dog or cat, a building (or parts of it) at different times of the day, a tree throughout the year...

Alan Edward Klein · Aug 9, 2019

Once I got my first color TV set, I never went back to BW TV's.. Stange watching a BW movie on a color TV. Isn't that just nuts?

Agulliver · Aug 9, 2019

B&W photography is often about how light strikes objects, and about contrast. I remember as a child observing a bottle of Ilford Hypam fixer sitting on the family coffee table with curtains behind open just a crack....there was a shaft of light shining on that bottle and the surface of the table where the bottle stood but little light elsewhere. I knew I had to capture it with B&W film...so I loaded up some HP5 (no "plus" in those days) and shot what one might call a "still life" image. Later that same day I noticed a house plant growing up against a window with outdoor plants a few feet away. It had been raining and there were water drops on the window. I realised that I could get almost a silhouette of the house plant, along with the water drops all in focus with f2.8 on my 50mm Tessar lens...and that the plants outside would be out of focus but provide lots of grey shades. I still rate that as among the best photos I've ever taken.

With colour, I am often looking either to reproduce a scene exactly as it was in real life or to capture a scene with many different colours in it. On my aforementioned trip to Dorset, in the town of Swanage there are various places where rivers flow through channels in the town centre with little bridges over them. That is my best description anyway.....and in the water that flows the colours of the town are reflected. Or photographing the garish coloured plastic seaside buckets, spades and cheap body boards & fishing nets that the tourist shops sell in bright sunlight. Those are great subjects for colour film....as well as the landscape on the walks I took with both brown and green plants like some alien landscape...and the occasional wild flower.

guangong · Aug 9, 2019

From my experience, unless working with studio-like conditions and setups, the great difficulty is inability to control colors and their arrangement. Too often a Budweiser can of something else intrudes. One way to control colors is to use digital...between camera and computer all is possible. Another’s alternative is Marshall’s color dies for b/w prints.
One of the advantages of painting is to control all elements of composition, including color.
On the other hand, although successful color photography is extremely difficult for the above reasons, when successful it can have an extremely powerful impact.

warden · Aug 9, 2019

Knowing what you like is important! If I were you I'd get rid of all the B&W film and make room for color. The only risk is a desire later on to repurchase it, which is no big deal.

What do you do when you see the world in colour?

Huss

Arklatexian

Theo Sulphate

MattKing

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Sirius Glass

StepheKoontz

koraks

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Willyekerslike

jim10219

eddie

Patrick Robert James

StepheKoontz

1kgcoffee

awty

MattKing

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KN4SMF

Andrew O'Neill

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Bill Burk

Huss

Agulliver

Theo Sulphate

Alan Edward Klein

Agulliver

guangong

warden

What do you do when you see the world in colour?

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