Relieving photographers of a burden

[pico]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I often think its the other way round: there's no question in my mind its easier to make a striking B&W photo than a genuinely good (whatever that means to each of us) colour photo.[...]

 

Limits are very important.

 

If you cannot distinguish a good color photo, then what are you talking about?

 

I find your disrespect of B&W purely impressionistic, tactical semantic obfuscation, and not about photographs, art or anything we care about.

 

.

Edited May 14, 2013 by pico

[stunsworth]

If you cannot distinguish a good color photo, then what are you talking about?

 

I don't think Peter is talking about not being able to recognise a good colour photograph, rather the difficulty in _creating_ one.

 

I'd be the first person to concede that I rarely produce colour photographs, partly because I find colour so much more difficult than black and white, so don't have the ability to produce consistantly good colour images. Luckily I happen to prefer black and white anyway.

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Peter H]

Pico, do you honestly believe I "disrespect" B&W photography simply because I feel its easier to make a striking B&W photo than a genuinely good colour photo? If so, you are mistaken.

 

To repeat myself: I believe its very hard to make a good colour photo, and therefore I don't agree that colour photography relieves photographers of a creative burden.

 

And as to why you feel that's not an opinion about photography, I am mystified.

Edited May 15, 2013 by Peter H

[pico]

I simply find B&W very difficult to make good photos. Please know that I began with B&W decades ago because that was almost all that would be published. I still find it difficult, but I stand by the challenge.

[stunsworth]

I simply find B&W very difficult to make good photos

 

I find it difficult too. However, I find colour far more difficult. If something is easier, that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy.

[Peter H]

Many highly accomplished photographers have said that they often find colour a distracting and complicating element in a photograph. By removing colour when it isn't a necessary part of the image they make it easier to compose a photo that has the effect they are after.

 

That's about all I'm saying here: easier, not easy.

 

Is that really disrespectful? I apologise if anyone feels it was. It wasn't intended to be.

[azzo]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

..

 

... , relieves photographers of a very real burden of imagination and creativity.

 

 

And that is what has been ''bothering'' me Peter, not that I found it disrespectful, mind you but, allow me not to agree with it. ...

[Peter H]

Ivan, we can disagree without being disrespectful of each other or our opinions, as we've proven frequently!

 

Its difficult for me to make good B&W photos. Its even more difficult for me to make good colour photos.

 

So, for me at least, coming up with a good colour photo requires even more imagination and creativity. Therefore, logically, making a good B&W photo requires less. Perhaps I shouldn't suggest that my experience is common to other people, but so many have said the same thing (that colour complicates things and removing it makes life easier) that I didn't think it was controversial to say it again.

[pico]

Limits are important in art and almost anything that is susceptible to valuation by individuals.

 

Could you Point to photographers who have made their mark on color for 'arts' sake?

 

Would Pete Turner be one?

Edited May 21, 2013 by pico

[sblitz]

Joel Meyerwitz

[Peter H]

Limits are important in art and almost anything that is susceptible to valuation by individuals.

 

Could you Point to photographers who have made their mark on color for 'arts' sake?

 

Would Pete Turner be one?

 

Pico, I agree limits can be very important in art. The sonnet for example with its very rigid set of constraints has been the framework for some of the most sublime and enduring writing in the English language. But I'm not aware of any of the great writers who have restricted themselves to it, because it serves quite a specific purpose that does not encompass their entire view of the world. It is not exactly the same as B&W photography, but it has a relationship with it which I think is worth considering.

 

Pete Turner is a notable photographer but not one that would spring to my mind in the context I was referring to. Oddly perhaps, he seems to me more closely akin to many B&W photographers than he is to contemporary photographers who use colour. He almost abstracts colour from a scene and presents it as a, or maybe the, main theme of the photo (in quite an exaggerated and sometimes melodramatic way) much as a B&W photographer may abstract shape and form and light and shadow and present them as crucial elements in a photo.

 

You ask for examples of "photographers who have made their mark on color for 'arts' sake".

 

I suggest if you go to the Photographers Gallery website here Photographers Gallery - Photographs By Artist you'll find many, and there are certainly many there I admire. But I'll pick out two from outside their list who I think illustrate my personal take on the subject of this thread, and the question of the use of colour photography. Remember, I said earlier in the thread that I admire photography when its real point is a reflection of the world outside, however personal that may be: when it encounters and confronts the world as it seems really to be, rather than a prettified or dramatised version of it.

 

So I'll suggest two photographers simply to illustrate my point, not as my idea of the pinnacles of art, but as photographers who use their own creative imaginations to say something to us about the world as clearly and directly as they can. They both work in both B&W and colour to great effect;

 

Tom Wood Tom Wood: the people's maverick photographer | Art and design | guardian.co.uk and

 

Slim Aarons Slim Aarons Collection | Getty Images Gallery.

 

Their subjects are from very different ends of the social spectrum, but there's a spirit in them that I think connects them all with us, and whether colour is present or absent is not the primary concern: it is a means to an expressive end.

[TLG]

On 5/9/2013 at 9:46 PM, 250swb said:

The meaning of the original post is that the stereoscopic photographers didn't pursue any greater ideals in photography (and therefore didn't advance stereo imaging) because it was enough that the visual effect on the viewer of the stereo image got them their adulation, not the subject photographed or the individual photographic style.

A decade on and thought I’d add a comment that Victorian photographers did advance stereoscopic imaging some considerable way, technically and artistically, you just won’t really encounter that through the cheap mass produced stereo cards of the 1800s and need to look at the higher end photographic studios of the day. Examples from the Brian May Archive are simply stunning for their technical execution, complexity and composition.

Things like this may possibly return in popularity when the quality of the technological implementations behind Apple’s “VR” headset becomes more widely available.