Those of you who shoot in B&W: don't you miss color?

I sometimes see a shot where colour really works for it. But this is a rare occasion and it would take me a year to shoot a roll of colour film well. The thing with colour is that it's very difficult to do well and I cannot find many photographers that use it well. Alex Webb comes to mind as the best in my opinion.

Black and white simply allows me to experience the world in a deeper sense. I see colour as almost a distraction from what is REALLY there. It's a complete change in perspective. I don't think I was every bad at shooting colour and actually felt I had a natural knack for it when I did shoot it, because I was conscious of it and really thought about it.
 
I started shooting in B/W at the tender age of 14 (1957) - have been doing since then for my private photography. Working commercially it was virtually all color unless I could persuade a client that monochrome would look better (they usually insisted on seeing both color and b/w before agreeing - or disagreeing with me).
I see in color - but the black and white shows me something else - a different take. Usually concentrates the vision a bit.
I also like the technical aspect of it - processing, editing, printing or scanning. More surprises in the images than with color.
I still have 40+ Carousel Trays loaded with mostly Kodachrome 25 and 64 + a large box with several 1000's slide pages of the same stock. Haven't looked at them for maybe 5-6 years.
If I had to go back to shooting for pay - I would get a couple of good DSLR's etc - but I have avoided that temptation. I like looking at other peoples color stuff and often admire the quality of it - but not enough to go back to it.
It is not any kind of snob attitude - just my own interest. 2012 was a heavy color year for me - at least 20+ rolls of Ektar 100, both 35 and 120 - but always for a purpose, friends weddings, the odd magazine piece etc. That is compared to about 600 rolls of black white film, again both 35 and 120.
Cleaned out my fridge from color and gave the "dogs breakfast" of films to a friend. A bit of a relief as I felt bad having it aging in the veggie crisper - and it freed up some space for the Tmax 2-400 120 rolls. Only New Years resolution - to finish those off in 2013!
 
I started shooting back in high school so long ago. Fell in love with the darkroom and the simplicity of B&W. It just stuck.
Even though I shoot digital, 95 percent of what I do for myself is done in B&W.
I just have no desire to recreate an exact replica of what's in front of me. Stripping away the color from a portrait or scene just feels right.
 
Are there situations, such as travel, during which you may prefer color photography, or would you always use B&W?
 
Excuse the pretentious language, but I think black and white has greater latitude for emotional expression. The image can be processed to a larger degree (in the darkroom, or on the computer) without the manipulation being overt or distracting.
 
Black and white is why I started doing photography. Now, I shot lots of slides over the years, but my first love is black and white, not to be "artistic" but because it speaks to me more directly, is more essential, more abstract, more formal in some sense, and because I love the textures it reveals. I often don't understand color photographs. Often it seems to me the color is there just because it was there, but has no compositional meaning. I really good color photograph is very hard to do and the things I look for -- shapes, textures, lines, and tonality informing those things, are harder for me to "get" in a color image. And I tend to "see" in black and white when I'm looking through a camera viewfinder -- optical or any other kind.
 
B&W (at least to me) = monochrome.
There are subtle differences between warm and cold B&W images that affects whether I like an image or not. And let's not forget the thousands of variations of toning methods and formulas. So no, B&W is not as simple as just shades of grey.

I enjoy taking, viewing, printing or even processing digitally monochrome images very much, there is a certain satisfaction in producing a good B&W image that I rarely get with color images.

Having said that, good color images are good images.
 
Sometimes.

Digital color is very different from the look you get with film. I prefer film color, because it is one step removed from reality. There is a built in level of abstraction that you don't get with digital, unless you manipulate it. Digital is just too perfect. Sometimes I'll see an add in a magazine and you can literally see the pancake makeup on the model. They end up looking like someone in a costume, rather than what they are intended to be.

Black and white just seems to strip things down to it's essence, like a sketch rather than a perfect rendering.

I used to shoot a lot of Kodachrome, but obviously that's no longer an option.
Kodak Portra is really beautiful and my choice for negative film.

Fuji always looked a little green to me.

I have fond memories of Agfa. It had a real interesting look. Some of their films still had some of that pre-war Agfacolor look, which was really nice.

But shooting large quantities of color film is really expensive.
 
1. like an earlier post said, color distracts me.
2. creature of habit. have been using tri x since the 70's.
3. have nothing against color photographs though, just not my trip.
4. even for family events, it is still b/w. others take colored images anyway.

happy new year rf.
 
Spanik said:
That's not my sentiment at all. While photo reduces 3D to 2D, b&w reduces it to 1D. Everything is lost when going to b&w. It becomes extremely flat and emotionless. Everthing looks official and dead in b&w. Certainly in the new way of doing b&w without any grey in it.

Honestly, what it the value of a b&w shot of autumn leaves?
Click to expand...

Personally speaking I like B&W for some portraits, I don't find it one dimensionally singular, often I find it can enhance depth or at least the illusion of depth as for 'emotionless' I'm not sure emotion is totally linked to colour, but then all my early emotional memories are mono–we didn't have a colour TV until 1976 😉

144475677.jpg


Then again sometimes I'm a photographically perverse and shoot colour on B&W film:
95350388.jpg

Trichrome rendering on Fuji Neopan film

Normally I try not to miss anything...
 
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