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

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Huss

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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!
 
Ha, I'm pretty much the same way. I almost always will choose color film over B&W film. I love the look of B&W, I just almost never want to shoot it.
I probably have 100 rolls of B &W film in my freezer.
My advice, don't fight it and just shoot color, but keep the B&W film.
 
Can't help you. I guess I'm just the opposite. I recently photographed our local summer street fair with Portra 160. The place was just bursting with color, so color film seemed to be a must. But once processed, i ended up converting most shots to B&W in PS because they looked better.

That being said, I recently photographed a model underwater wearing a brightly colored, flowered dress. I saw the scene in color, and it worked very well. It wouldn't have worked in B&W.

Jim B.
 
I tend to see in B&W. Shapes, tones. textures etc. That's why I own an MM.

But I just started a new project that is color. We'll see were it leads me. It has started as a bit of a struggle but is getting better the more I work through it.
 
I don't think that you see mainly colour determines that you must make colour photographs. You could also consciously take a step away from that and might arrive at more thoughtful use of the gray scale than people to whom that comes more naturally.
But if you don't want to use it, it's a simple economic consideration... the film is aging and may better be used by someone else, sooner. I'm sure you'll get rid of it on this forum.
 
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!
Click to expand...

I'm nearly the opposite. I prefer B&W for its look, but also partly because I can do the end to end processing (from bulk rolls to digitizing) "in-house". I haven't gotten around to doing my own color processing and digitizing yet, and I hate sending off color film to outside labs.

Depending on what you have, we could do a trade if you're interested. I have 500ft of Superia 400 in my freezer that I'll probably never get through.
 
Play to your strengths and tastes. Some of your recent posts especially [probably with the lca 120] made me realise how much I love colour too :D.
 
"To photograph in B&W is like drawing, you pay attention to the lines, shapes, contrast.
To photograph in color is like painting, you make volumes with colors, you mix them"

This is a concept expressed by Alejandro Cegarra, Oskar Barnak Newcomer Award Winner 2014 in an interview. As an absolute beginner in the painting and drawing I fully agree to this.

If interested you can find the video with the interview here, anyway interesting.

Personally I'm now more in a B&W mood but this is just now! Maybe one day...

robert
 
What was the motivation in filling your freezer up with black and white film in the first place? I'm curious about that because from what I've seen of your work you are far more of a natural colour photographer!
 
Keith said:
What was the motivation in filling your freezer up with black and white film in the first place? I'm curious about that because from what I've seen of your work you are far more of a natural colour photographer!
Click to expand...

I got a really good deal on it from a friend that owns a studio and switched to digital.
I also got a lot of colour film from him too, which is what I am using most of the time!
 
airfrogusmc said:
I tend to see in B&W. Shapes, tones. textures etc. That's why I own an MM.

But I just started a new project that is color. We'll see were it leads me. It has started as a bit of a struggle but is getting better the more I work through it.
Click to expand...

Yeah your B&W work rocks, it just is so good. I much prefer it to your colour work.
 
One thing that has really made me appreciate colour more is using negativelabpro.com
I scan my own film, and this product finally allows me to realize what I envisaged.

I just love controlling the exposure to effect the saturation of colour.
 
airfrogusmc said:
I tend to see in B&W. Shapes, tones. textures etc. That's why I own an MM.
Click to expand...

In my case, that’s why I reach for digitals whose EVFs permit monochrome display, to start the tonal conversion as soon as I start to compose. A variation of previsualization that also eases the later stage of computer development (which may entail further choices/challenges/compromises, of course, in converting RAW color via luminance tweaks in the color channels).

It’s also why I tend to use a buddy system when shooting 35mm BW film—having a digital EVF handy to make tonal sense of the as-yet-unconverted world of color in the film VF. Leica T as BW seeing eye for M3 loaded with TMax, for instance.

If I lived in Huss World, which seems like a delightful prospect even before we account for the SoCal/Santa Monica hues and luminances surrounding him, it might be different. It would be a happy vacation, at least, eating and drinking Ektar and Portra, Superia and Inferia, before I came home and gradially converted everything to charcoal and ash, soot and whitewash!
 
I made the switch (from B&W to color) in the mid sixties. And I never had the courage to go back to B&W.
I am afraid of not been able to compose in B&W anymore, and that, if I ever try, I would loose my skill of catching nice images in color
 
Sometimes the story I’m telling with a photo, color gets distracting, in the way. Bright colors can detract from other features in a photo. Roy G. BIV, with green almost being a neutral color that doesn’t shout out, “hey look at me!” I would always suggest to a client and help with clothing ideas as the main feature I considered, I wanted people to view first when viewing a photograph is/are the face(s).

Just my thought.
 
I find myself to be the opposite. if its been a while, I force myself to shoot color just to change things up. when i look at the shots, i sometimes wish i had shot it in B&W.



I feel more natural shooting in B&W. maybe because sometimes I feel that life, human nature and the likes is more shades of grey than color. that being said, I shoot 80% landscapes and B&W seems, in the prints, to just be right. i save color work for family snapshots and vacations. that being said, when I make day trips to lake tahoe or yosemite, I always have 2 cameras, 1 with color and 1 with B&W. I seem to always prefer the B&W shots, except for sunsets/sunrises which of course have to be in color
 
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