BW or Color?

[Bill Pierce]

Black and white or color?

My feeling is that color can often be the great leveler. Rather uninspired work can be a little more pleasing in color, while some strong images are weakened by color that takes attention away from other elements, especially in news and documentary work. For a long time, all my family snaps were in color and most of my “serious” work was in B&W.

But digital makes it much easier to control color than the old days of printing film on dye, Ciba and C. Digital makes it easier to make color appropriate to the subject. Digital is either color or B&W, whatever you want to make it. With the greater ability to control the color that digital affords, I find myself printing more and more pictures in color, but spending more and more time controlling and manipulating that color.

Any thoughts?

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

I think those are truly different worlds... Color itself can be used to emphasize emotions, and black&white is per se an abstraction (from the colored reality) that "cleans" reality on print and leads us to deep, bare concepts -clear or hidden ones- involved on images...

Even though digital offers the advantage of converting color to b&w and the advantage of treating both of them to any precise and desired point to add strength to a composition, I don't feel like -never, honestly- shooting digital to see, afterwards, if an image works better in color or in b&w... I was taught for years to think in b&w, and then to think in color, and to do just one of them every time I shoot... Indeed when I shoot b&w I consider contrast (light) mainly while composing, but with color, the cleanness of composition tends to rely more on color contrast than on lights and shadows: in color it's the cool and the warm tones and their separation and juxtaposition what helps us tell a story in a more intense and emotive way.

Of course sometimes we have little time and all we can do is shoot... And yes, I print in color more than 15 years ago and I use for it more time than then manipulating.

Cheers,

Juan

 

[Steve Bellayr]

"spending more and more time controlling and manipulating that color." That seems to be a common phrase among digital photographers especially with still lifes & landscapes. I wonder if it is necessary. Does the average viewer know see anything more. With "street photography" the image is predominant whether it is in color of black and white.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Another thought:

I no doubt prefer digital processing when doing color... Filtering color with enlarger was a slow process taking lots of time too, and I don't miss it at all: color digital manipulation is vastly superior to me... For black and white yet I feel wet printing is a powerful, easy and fast tool for the best printed material...

I really wish digital color prints could be commercially lab printed at much more than 300dpi, though... The difference in front of enlarged prints from a good negative is so noticeable...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[kshapero]

For me I prefer B&W in film (TriX) and digital in color but sometimes converting to B&W. I do this when I can not seem to get the "color just right" then lo and behold B&W is the shot. Alas it doesn't always work out this way.

 

[mrmeadows]

I think you've put your finger exactly on a modern photographer's conundrum. Shooting for myself in the past, I would decide on a project-by-project basis whether to do color or BW. After shooting, the die was cast and I didn't think much about alternative universes.

As you've pointed out, digital processing has changed all that. Now my decision is effectively delayed until post-processing. For individual images, it can be a pretty easy decision as usual. For a project, however, I find it can be maddening, because some images of the take are strong in color but others clearly want to be BW. With either choice, one can wind up with relatively weak images which can't be dropped without diminishing the story. (I never seen a successful mixing the two!)

I suppose such indecision sometimes stems from a lack of clarity in my mind about a project's central purpose or from a stubborn regret at not having made more or better photos with which to tell the story. I believe, however, that there is another factor at work. Like you, apparently, I still tend to believe that BW is more appropriate for "serious" work and that color is somehow second class for all but very rare serious projects and is most suited to landscapes, wildlife, casual amateurs, etc. Thus even if a project can be reasonably successful in color, I have a tendency to favor BW, thereby hoping perhaps to better-establish its seriousness. In any case, this tendency can distort my decision-making and make it more difficult.

Now there is something very inescapably real about the "seriousness" or "gravity" of BW for the documentary and journalism subjects that I appreciate most. I've heard many attempts to analyze this fact and have often tried myself, but all fall far short; it remains a mystery. Although it grates, I'm resigned to never having a valid explanation. Perhaps, as has been said about music, "talking about photography is like dancing about architecture". That said, such "philosophy" doesn't yield much practical guidance in dealing with my digital project files.

--- Mike

 

[Gary Briggs]

I'd be unhappy if I could't have both...
I don't necessarily use them for the same thing, landscape in b/w are not easy but can be incredible (deserts, storms...)
This winter have enjoyed the look of leafless trees in b/w.

 

[jsrockit]

Digital makes it easier to make color appropriate to the subject. Digital is either color or B&W, whatever you want to make it. With the greater ability to control the color that digital affords, I find myself printing more and more pictures in color, but spending more and more time controlling and manipulating that color.

Any thoughts?

I feel I'm one of the few who is satisfied with digital B&W. The largest strength of digital is the fact that I get to choose B&W or color later... and that the software to do so is great. I have no regrets about not being able to go to the darkroom anymore. That said, I was more of a color photographer when I used C-prints and cibachromes... I rarely did B&W after learning how to do color in the darkroom. What's funny now is that I do much more B&W now that I am 99% digital. I'd say my work is 50-50% color and B&W. I feel it is a great time to be a photographer.

 

[GSNfan]

Color and b&w divide that used to be very obvious in film days no longer applies to digital.

You could have a b&w and a color version of the same RAW image file and yet both will look so distinct that some people won't see the connection right away (you could make a b&w image color, but thats not the point there). Even more importantly each of those images could change as new and more advanced processing software is introduced. And software advances with precessing power, the more powerful the processing power the more advanced a software capability. In other words the RAW files that were shot lets say in 2003 and produced nothing exciting in terms of both color and b&w then, suddenly they get a new lease on life with advances in processing power.

This inevitable trend in still photography means that a photograph (especially digital) is never the final product. Its simply a blueprint for infinite number of future photographs with advancing technology... Today you might like one look and you process a shot accordingly, some years later a new look is hot and you precess the same RAW images differently. Recycling the same RAW file with every new version of processing software.

Film is also no longer safe, with scanners getting more advanced as well as scanning software (and processing software), it would mean that even film rescan becomes necessary with each new advance in scanner capability or scanner software.

But there is a silver lining in this madness of technology controlling photography. Content, its the content that will be the single defining factor in a image, not the tones, the look, the color and other form aspects. A simple image that stands purely on content, becomes a unique photograph worth artistic merit, an image that is about tones and color and depth and other nonsense, is just one version of its current processed variation.

In other words to those who're serious about still photography it would mean they should forget everything that they know about how an image look and should look, instead they should go for the content.

This is at least what I think and i might be wrong; however, recently i have been feeling rather excited about Silver Efex Pro 2 and how I can recycle my old RAW files with this new version of a b&w processing software...