Actually That's Interesting - B&W v Colour?
Discussion
Well as you started it Mrs F 
Original:
Became:
And suddenly the three people (woman in background, one man walking towards her, one man walking away) took life and it became known as 'Love's Dances' after this poem:
In love's dances, in love's dances
One retreats and one advances.
One grows warmer and one colder,
One more hesitant, one bolder.
One gives what the other needed
Once, or will need, now unheeded.
Original:
Became:
And suddenly the three people (woman in background, one man walking towards her, one man walking away) took life and it became known as 'Love's Dances' after this poem:
In love's dances, in love's dances
One retreats and one advances.
One grows warmer and one colder,
One more hesitant, one bolder.
One gives what the other needed
Once, or will need, now unheeded.
Bloody hell...The boat's sunklos Angeles said:
The last two pics show how black and white emphasises textures and shadows, making a subject mysterious and therefore more interesting than colour which tends to highlight everything.
Yes, well, that and some fairly extensive editing and effects to introduce a grainy effect like wot black and white shots are meant to have to be pukka.
Good spot to see the potential of the image though.
los Angeles said:
In time I suppose another great photographer will arise who uses photo shop to perfect his shots.
In my book it's about making an image, and photograhers of old used every trick in their admittedly smaller book to make the image as good as possible. I could have sat there with a film camera loaded with FP4 and printed it onto high contrast paper, dodging and burning as I did so, but image making has - er - developed. In the same way I'm not going to Cambridge today in a Stanley Steamer!
NB No grain added; that's the natural texture of the beach with the contrast beefed up.
>> Edited by simpo two on Tuesday 8th November 08:45
rude girl said:
I have become fascinated with black and white. I experiment with desaturating almost every photo I take now, because they are so often a completely different picture in b&w. I love the way light comes alive and you see completely different things when you desaturate a photograph.
This is a really good point, taking away the colour in an image often makes you look at it ina completely different way and you see the textures, tones and sometimes more crucially shapes rather than concentrating on the colour.
For me the difference between B&W and colour is all dependant upon the subject matter. For a lot of my stuff colour is important as it illustrates the plumage or breeding colouration of a particular species. However I found when shooting some landscapes that a black and white treatment made me look at the landscape in a totally different way that I enjoyed more.
Chris
I think you're being very hard LA. This is not a forum for professional photographers, although I think it's telling that we have a few.
If we didn't have the jiggery pokery that digital gives us (because your comments also imply that in-camera adjustments are cheating too), then people like me wouldn't be in a position within 6 months of buying their first SLR of producing images that are pleasing (even if it's just to themselves). For a start, the film and development costs would prohibit practice.
And amateurs don't have the same physical access, or ability to 'stage' photographs. Take Simpo's beach. Maybe he could have waited for the tanker to go. Maybe there was another one coming up behind it though. And he would have lost the composition of the people, and the light. You say that you'd prefer there to be less photoshoppery because it's a 'technical' skill, but I think you're really saying that you prefer the technical skills to be applied at the camera. Maybe you're right, and that is the 'purist' way to do it, but the purist might have a couple of cameras with colour/b&w film in, and a great deal more time than someone making pictures for pleasure.
I don't really understand your point to be honest, rather than disagreeing with it. You're a wordsmith - do you apply the same principles to the use of the word processor? Is a line-break generated automatically less pure than one generated on a typewriter? Do you respect writers less if they use a spellchecker or a proof-reader? I just highlighted and removed a sentence from this post, to make it easier to read. Simpo removed a tanker from his pic to make it easier to read what was happening on the beach. Same thing, or different?
If we didn't have the jiggery pokery that digital gives us (because your comments also imply that in-camera adjustments are cheating too), then people like me wouldn't be in a position within 6 months of buying their first SLR of producing images that are pleasing (even if it's just to themselves). For a start, the film and development costs would prohibit practice.
And amateurs don't have the same physical access, or ability to 'stage' photographs. Take Simpo's beach. Maybe he could have waited for the tanker to go. Maybe there was another one coming up behind it though. And he would have lost the composition of the people, and the light. You say that you'd prefer there to be less photoshoppery because it's a 'technical' skill, but I think you're really saying that you prefer the technical skills to be applied at the camera. Maybe you're right, and that is the 'purist' way to do it, but the purist might have a couple of cameras with colour/b&w film in, and a great deal more time than someone making pictures for pleasure.
I don't really understand your point to be honest, rather than disagreeing with it. You're a wordsmith - do you apply the same principles to the use of the word processor? Is a line-break generated automatically less pure than one generated on a typewriter? Do you respect writers less if they use a spellchecker or a proof-reader? I just highlighted and removed a sentence from this post, to make it easier to read. Simpo removed a tanker from his pic to make it easier to read what was happening on the beach. Same thing, or different?
simpo two said:
In love's dances, in love's dances
One retreats and one advances.
One grows warmer and one colder,
One more hesitant, one bolder.
One gives what the other needed
Once, or will need, now unheeded.
That's my favourite picture, it has pride of place in my house, everyone who see it loves it.
los Angeles said:
Ah, right. The great photographers just took a snap agot it right, but they waited hours on end to get it. Bresson is a good example of that type. Ansel Adams thought nothing of enhancing shots with filters and cropping. In time I suppose another great photographer will arise who uses photo shop to perfect his shots.
True along with quite a bit of post processing involving all sorts of techniques to manipulate the image. Choice of paper and manipulating chemicals to add graininess for example. Or bending the paper during exposure to achieve special effects, sometimes as part of a double exposure process. All rather hit and miss so quite time consuming. Most of the top photographers used specialists for printing work.
As Simpo said, it is mostly about the image not the mechanics of the process. That is true even of fashion photography where image manipulation is so vital to the genre.
As for other great photographers arising - I think they already exist. But there are so many around these days, with time to specialise if they wish since processing and effects are more readily achieved and do not require darkrooms and all sorts of other paraphernalia, that it is much more difficult to make a stand-out reputation.
Photography, as a broad term, has become so much more accessible in recent decades and especially so with the digital revolution that satisfies the 'show me now' demands much better than the Polaroid process ever could.
Reductions in size and weight of the cameras has helped (?) of course, though perhaps I should differentiate between taking pictures, which is what we mostly do, and professional photography.
But as with many things the recognition of an individual's particular skill and the longevity of the appeal in their work will only be established after some time has elapsed. That is the definition of a 'Master'. So if we exclude the immediate reputations created by circumstance and newsreel type photography (Tim Page in Vietnam springs to mind) you get the fashion scene products like David Bailey and others who became prominent quickly and then retained and spread a reputation over many years.
The trouble with being another Ansel Adams, whose reputation built over a number of years as far as I understand it, is that you can't use the same vehicle for making your name without appearing to be derivative. In fashion you can be as derivative as you like and get away with it to a large extent since the fashion reflects the times. Landscapes tend to be relatively constant other than for changes in the season. What has not remained constant is the equipment required to make a telling shot. The choices are much broader these days though perhaps still require specialist kit (ie not a pocket instant device) to achieve a directly comparable result.
Likewise with Cartier-Bresson. His images are quite well known, even if we, the masses, do not always recogonise a Bresson we may know the style.
Repeating the style will always be difficult - capturing 'le moment juste' always is. But it would be even more difficult to do something similar and make it your own given that the concept is already well established in the public domain.
The thing about the 'greats' - artists, photographers, musicians, whatever - that strikes me is just how many incredibly and equally or almost equally talented people there are who don't make it to fame and fortune or to become household names or simply recognised in their field. The photo examples being posted in this forum seem to illustrate that point.
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