It should be no surprise that for the person who can cry during a beer commercial, that my photography is so much about emotion. I know what I like and what I like less when I look at other people’s work and when I look at my own. This notion applies to all forms of art for me, not just photography. I can’t always express precisely what is behind my assessment. Most often it comes down to how I feel. Taking classes in photography and in art and design have helped me move from emotion to words that help me think about the why behind my feelings. And by the way, that’s how language works … language is the way we categorize and make sense of the world around us. I’m evolving.
I never shoot my photographs in black and white. If you haven’t memorized all my blogs, I’ve never been in a dark room. Even when I was shooting film, I always relied on a commercial lab to develop my photographs. I became a photography student during the digital age, and I work my photographs in computer programs. My education has focused on these programs almost as much as my studies in photography, art and design. So many of these processes use the analog of film development. I’ve devoted so many hours to learning this craft, through coursework, textbooks, labs, videos and through experience. My work is done in Adobe Camera Raw (in Bridge and Photoshop), in Lightroom and in a third-party program, NIK.
I took an excellent class in digital black and white photography. I’ve taken several classes from this instructor. He’s a professional photographer and a wonderful teacher. He’s thorough and deliberate, he’s a technician and he knows how to describe and explain his processes and his experiences in detail. He’s also an excellent photographer and I often emulate his work; he’s given me so many ideas about how to grow as a photographer.
When shooting digital images, you can shoot in color and then, in post processing, the color image can be converted to black and white. In fact, by starting with a color image, you add flexibility and creativity to the process of converting to black and white by being able to work on different color channels. The primary reason to shoot in color is that you can convert a color image to black and white. If you shoot a black and white image, you do not capture the color information. You can’t convert the black and white image to color. Having said that, Adobe is creating filters that allow the colorizing of a black and white image through artificial intelligence. I can’t imagine, however, that you would arrive at the complex color information you can achieve from an original. That’s my early take on the process.
The other reason I don’t shoot in black and white is that I am seriously addicted to color. When I am drawn to a scene, whether a breathtaking landscape or a small abstract, it is often the colors that fix my vision. Color enhances how I think about and appreciate an image. Why would I remove color?
My greatest appreciation for black and white images are associated with street photography and documentary photography. I think this could be the case because these forms most directly tell a story. All of photography is about communicating a story of one sort or another, but in those forms, the stories can be the most compelling. A black and white image in some ways strips the story down to its most basic components. At least, that is how it feels to me.
For most of my short experience as a photographer, the only times I’ve created black and white landscapes or nature images has been as a student in this class. That has changed during the covid.
The covid has given me lots of things … some loneliness, lots of stress and anxiety, a smidgen of depression and some unfortunate weight gain. I told my daughter in law the other day that this has been both the year of the covid and the year of meatloaf. I can’t remember a time when I allowed myself to eat so much comfort food with so little guilt. The covid has also offered me a great deal of time, and time has opened the door for me to experiment and to be more creative in my work.
Thus, I’ve found myself converting more images to black and white. Through the next couple of blogs, I’m going to present some of my black and white images taken during the year of the covid.
There are many ways to convert a color image to black and white. As in most of my post processing work, I tend to lean toward the simple. As a rule of thumb in my working an image, my goal is almost always to create an image that the viewer, including myself, doesn’t ever think about the image having been worked at all. If the first thing I think about, or the second or third thing, is the way the image was processed, I’ve overcooked the photograph.
A black and white image offers some creative license in the same way I feel more open in working my long exposure or night images. And in some respects, I feel this same openness to creativity in processing my abstracts. In these cases, I’ve already made a leap from reality. I’m not going to find an orange sky disconcerting in a night image and I’m not going to be disturbed by a totally black sky in daylight in a black and white image. I can do more cooking, within reason.
I convert my color images using filters. As most people walk around with a camera on their phones, everyone knows how filters can transform an image. Black and white filters operate in the same way. These filters are a starting point for my conversions, and then I can make additional changes to the image using the same processes I employ for my color photographs. My filters either come from the NIK program, Silver Efex Pro or I use the black and white filters in Lightroom.
I’ve enjoyed the creative experience of working with these black and white images. As with all my images, they evoke a mood. I know that working in black and white is helping me to grow as a photographer. I recently attended an education program offered by an excellent professional photographer. He was offering some suggestions about how a person could grow their creativity. One of these was to shoot in black and white. I’m going to take him up on his recommendation because I can see how this exercise would help to see light, texture and form in a different way. It isn’t going to cure my addiction for color, but it could make me a better photographer.
These were my thoughts from the senate trial on impeachment.
So much of the dysfunction in our society can be explained by our virulent history of racism.
I need to spend some time working on aiming my spaceship laser.
Mike Pence needs better friends.
The lust for power among politicians could cause the demise of our democracy.
The republicans impeached a president for lying to his wife about having sex in the Whitehouse with an intern. It was consensual sex with an adult. It wasn’t smart, ethical, or moral, but it also wasn’t anything new for a president. If every president who had an affair was impeached, congress wouldn’t have time to write and pass legislation.
The republican party lacks credibility and integrity. The Orange Emperor was acquitted based on their claim that you can’t impeach an office holder when no longer in office. The Orange Emperor was impeached while in office, and the primary reason the case was not taken up by the senate while he was still in office was that the leader refused to take the case. This jujitsu position was adopted by many of the republican senators while voting to acquit and agreeing that the house managers made their case.
I’ve been on jury duty in my life, multiple times. There isn’t any leaving the room during the trial. Jurors aren’t meeting with defense attorneys. Jurors aren’t reading books or papers. I understand that the senate hearing isn’t a formal trial … in many respects it is a more solemn responsibility. Appearances matter. So many jerks and jackasses.
The republican party is becoming the party of white supremacists, Nazi’s, and whack jobs.
Can you imagine what would have happened if President Obama had incited the storming of the capitol on January 6th.
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