Color distracts? The subject is black and white

[Paul J]

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Infact I think Mitch's example perfectly illustrates why the authors argument is flawed. A straight colour shot is for more honest. It's far more indicative of the actual scene. It's far more likely to show the scene for what it is, you could call that it's soul. Our reality has evolved to see colour not black and white.

 

You can not see a person's soul. The only way we can catch a glimpse or an impression of it is by things such as they way someone wears their hair, their clothes and colours, their makeup etc etc etc. This is their expression of soul. The "traditional" photographer's role is to record it, the viewers role is to make up their own mind. Removing it with black and white is no different to removing it with digital manipulation and is the photographer imposing their impression.

 

One of the few inviolate rules I force upon my documentary photo students is that they may not use Photoshop or other processing software to manipulate images beyond making the normal adjustments that would be made in a traditional darkroom

 

Shooting black and white IS removing the very truth he claims to be preserving and is no different from any kind of manipulation.

[exile]

One of our members here took a shot of a simple ocean wave. It was in color and I think would have suffered dearly if in black and white. Sorry I forgot his name but the shot is iconic in my mind. I am a real fan of black and white, and I agree with his premise that colors can distract from one another but there is a place for both in my imaging world.

 

Agreed. There is a distinction here between monochrome and black and white.

Monochrome also restricts us to brightness contrasts, but still allows context and emotion through colour. Likewise duotones etc.

[Guest malland]

Exactly! Some images work in colour, some in black and white (a few in both) (and many of mine in neither:() A good photographer should be able to identify which is which for each subject and light.

jaap, at least in terms of intent. There is one well known image by Moriyama Daido, with high emotional impact, of a young woman running up a steep, narrow alley, seen from below and from the back: she seems to be runnign away from someone. I first saw this in a B&W print and subsequently as a color print. Presumably he had taken it with color negative film and originally printed it in B&W; and only later did he print it in color when he published his first book of color photographs around 1989. Some images work well either in color or B&W; but I think that one generally will produce better photographs when the intent and the visualization is one or the other.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Bangkok Obvious [WIP]

Eggleston said that he was "at war with the obvious"...

[250swb]

A straight colour shot is for more honest. It's far more indicative of the actual scene. It's far more likely to show the scene for what it is, you could call that it's soul. Our reality has evolved to see colour not black and white.

 

.

 

What is 'honest' about pointing your camera at something in the first place? The scene isn't 'honest' because you cropped it in the veiwfinder, making it conform to what you want it to mean. There is no peripheral vision in a photograph, we only see what you want us to see.

 

The point was made in a 1970's conceptual work by John Hilliard called 'Cause of Death', the same photograph of a body draped in a sheet and cropped four different ways, each suggesting a different cause of death. Photographs are not normally as open to alternative interpretations, but those alternatives still exist just by you being somewhere with a camera.

 

The greater difficulty arises when people cite colour as being more honest because it seems more real. Yet honesty lies closer to the B&W image because it is already an abstraction, and nowadays with digital camera's B&W isn't imposed by materials, as with film, it is a choice. So to make that choice and use B&W clearly tells people you are making your point with a photograph, it is your vision and clearly an abstraction from reality. So you aren't fooling anybody to start with by using B&W.

 

Colour on the other hand,.... well you compose for it, you change the saturation, the colour balance etc., you generally fiddle about with it even in a purely documentary image. Honesty would be to just say, 'look I cropped this image from life, this is the colour that came out of the camera, even if it is a bit weird, but I didn't want to manipulate it'. So how often does that happen? So don't fool yourself anybody, the more you try to make colour look like reality, the more you think it represents reality, the less honest it becomes, because a photograph of any sort is not reality and never will be.

 

Steve

[exile]

"If you want to capture a child at play, and really see the child, shoot them in black and white." -B.D.Cohen.

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[Guest malland]

...The greater difficulty arises when people cite colour as being more honest because it seems more real. Yet honesty lies closer to the B&W image because it is already an abstraction, and nowadays with digital camera's B&W isn't imposed by materials, as with film, it is a choice. So to make that choice and use B&W clearly tells people you are making your point with a photograph, it is your vision and clearly an abstraction from reality. So you aren't fooling anybody to start with by using B&W...

So, because Kodachrome was a B&W film with the colors (dye couplers) added in the processing it was also less "honest"? I don't see that honesty is inherent in the materials or the process; it's a matter of intent.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Bangkok Obvious [WIP]

Eggleston said that he was "at war with the obvious"...

[Paul J]

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What is 'honest' about pointing your camera at something in the first place? The scene isn't 'honest' because you cropped it in the veiwfinder, making it conform to what you want it to mean. There is no peripheral vision in a photograph, we only see what you want us to see.

 

The point was made in a 1970's conceptual work by John Hilliard called 'Cause of Death', the same photograph of a body draped in a sheet and cropped four different ways, each suggesting a different cause of death. Photographs are not normally as open to alternative interpretations, but those alternatives still exist just by you being somewhere with a camera.

 

The greater difficulty arises when people cite colour as being more honest because it seems more real. Yet honesty lies closer to the B&W image because it is already an abstraction, and nowadays with digital camera's B&W isn't imposed by materials, as with film, it is a choice. So to make that choice and use B&W clearly tells people you are making your point with a photograph, it is your vision and clearly an abstraction from reality. So you aren't fooling anybody to start with by using B&W.

 

Colour on the other hand,.... well you compose for it, you change the saturation, the colour balance etc., you generally fiddle about with it even in a purely documentary image. Honesty would be to just say, 'look I cropped this image from life, this is the colour that came out of the camera, even if it is a bit weird, but I didn't want to manipulate it'. So how often does that happen? So don't fool yourself anybody, the more you try to make colour look like reality, the more you think it represents reality, the less honest it becomes, because a photograph of any sort is not reality and never will be.

 

Steve

 

Well to be honest, I don't actually care about manipulation. My post was a reaction to the authors statement. He forces students not to subtract anything from the iamge in one breath and then tells them to subtract the colour in the next?

 

All photography is a lie, an interpretation, for the reasons you point out. So lets be at ease with that rather than force students to do anything. That is not modern. That is not art. That is not forging new ways of seeing.

 

At times, I play with colour a lot. Sometime like crazy. Sometime not at all if I want to preserve reality. It's context and intent. I don't care. It's my art and that's what I do.

 

You will never capture anyone's soul. So do what art always has done and make a statement about it if you want. Reality is an illusion for you to interpret, explore and discuss in anyway you want. Some "institutions" such as reportage have different requirements.

[250swb]

So, because Kodachrome was a B&W film with the colors (dye couplers) added in the processing it was also less "honest"? I don't see that honesty is inherent in the materials or the process; it's a matter of intent.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Bangkok Obvious [WIP]

Eggleston said that he was "at war with the obvious"...

 

'Honest' isn't a word I would normally ever use in relation to photography, so I was using in the context of a reply about 'honesty'.

 

Steve

[Guest malland]

Steve, honesty refers to the truth. The beauty in art is in truth, whether that be in the content or in the form. I wouldn't rule out honesty. (I'm in too much of a Zen moment to expand on this now).

 

EDIT: Maybe I can say something with another picture instead: this is also one that I visualized in color, with the darkness all around, with the rapid falloff in light.

 

 

M9-P | Summicron-28 | ISO 640 pushed 2.15 stops | f/2.8 | 1/125 sec

Bangkok

 

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Bangkok Obvious [WIP]

Eggleston said that he was "at war with the obvious"...

[Paul J]

Honesty is subjective. In many ways it's a flawed concept. Absolute truth is very rare. The only truth is totality but we aren't able to get a grip of what that is and it often proves us wrong...we don't even know if it stands still.

[Your Old Dog]

We need a rack. One with the thumb attachments. Pitting B&W against colour is blasphemy and this guy should pay. Soul searching discussion that bend the mind should be taboo in the photographic arts

[philipus]

Am a bit surprised about the intensive reactions here.

 

I consider it to be quite a balanced piece.

 

I read it when it was posted and began writing something in the comment box but then my computer deleted it somehow.

 

I don't think it is balanced at all. Cole seems, to me, intent on defending why he's forcing black and white upon his students, attempting to soften this by saying that all of his b/w images are initially captured in colour. Personally I found the piece weakly argued, seeming more as an excuse to align himself with great photographers. Actually, the article only suggests that he hasn't, in 55 years, developed as a photographer. If he were true to his origins, which I would have respected, then he'd still be shooting Tri-X and developing wet. Conversely, if he were truly an open-minded photographer then he'd have fully embraced digital in all its purported glory, from monochrome to HDR.

 

Last but not least, it's also a question of style.

 

And let's be honest, aren't many in with Leica for the style.

 

Starting with the last bit first, I agree - there are lots of people - I wouldn't even call them photographers, posers is more accurate - who buy the latest and greatest by Leica to show off. You see that in the ski slopes or on the water, too. They are the source of some truly hilarious threads in this forum in particular. I'm certainly not in it for some purported "style", however.

 

But, and this is ultimately the crux of the matter, it is a question of style, just as whether one photographs using digital or film cameras is a style decision in some way. Too bad Cole doesn't let his students make that decision for themselves.

 

Philip

[zlatkob]

I don't think it is balanced at all. Cole seems, to me, intent on defending why he's forcing black and white upon his students, attempting to soften this by saying that all of his b/w images are initially captured in colour. Personally I found the piece weakly argued, seeming more as an excuse to align himself with great photographers. Actually, the article only suggests that he hasn't, in 55 years, developed as a photographer. If he were true to his origins, which I would have respected, then he'd still be shooting Tri-X and developing wet. Conversely, if he were truly an open-minded photographer then he'd have fully embraced digital in all its purported glory, from monochrome to HDR.

 

It seems to me that he has fully embraced digital. If you read it again, you'll see that he is definitely not "forcing black & white upon his students". He is limiting what they can do with Photoshop, but allowing them to convert to black & white. He is expressing a personal preference for black & white, but his work is a mix of color and black & white, depending on the subject matter.

[250swb]

These are students he is tutoring, he is limiting their options so they can be taught to concentrate on composition and content using forethought, without resorting the PS later. If only more people were made to think that hard about their images.

 

Steve

[Guest malland]

Yes, students. With the ubiquity of digital — leaving out manipulations beyond contrast and burning and dodging, as Colen discusses — my feeling is that any photography student should have B&W darkroom course to learn what a good B&W print is and thereby to appreciate gradation and tones of B&W. Beyond that the world's your oyster: do what you want and feel. I would also argue that color vs B&W is not that interesting a subject in itelf, in that (since Eggleston's original exhibition at MOMA,) this has been discussed [ad nauseum.

 

There are much more interesting issues discussed in an article by Jed Pearl in The New Republic on the Spring issue of Aperture Magazine, with the secondary title of When photography is everywhere, when is it art?. The article ends with the following paragraph:

What is lacking in a lot of the new digital hi-jinks is precisely this abiding sensitivity to the way that the world affects the artist. Many have argued that the origins of photography are to be discovered well before Fox Talbot and Daguerre fixed an image in the 1830s, going back to the realization by earlier generations of scientists and dreamers that certain light sensitive substances can actually register the shadows and silhouettes of objects. Children still embrace this primal photographic magic when they make blueprints of leaves and flowers. Sommer would argue that the essence of photography is not its capacity to mirror the world, but its capacity to fix that fleeting image. Many people can see clearly, but it is the photographer who registers the experience of sight, turning images into afterimages. At the end of the day, the photographer is the sensitive surface, receiving the impact and imprint of an experience.*What is photography without the honesty and inevitability of the sensitized surface? Photographers may well do without the print’s slow emergence in the chemical bath in the darkroom, but as a guiding metaphor the sensitive surface remains as honest and inevitable as ever.

In postings above I showed to photographs that I felt needed to be in color, so please bear with me as I add another one that I think could work in either color or B&W, although for me it works better in color, and a final one that, for me, needs to be in B&W.

 

 

 

M9-P | Summilux-50 pre-ASPH | ISO 640 | f/1.4 | 1/1500 sec

Bangkok

 

 

 

 

M-Monochrom | Summicron-28 | ISO 1250 | f/5.6(?) | 1/500 sec

Bangkok

 

 

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Paris au rythme de Basquiat and Other Poems [download link for book project]

[pop]

While not bothering to read the entire article, I find the advice on using colors very thoughtful and useful.

Having said that, I'm not going to let it influence the way I will take pictures of people or anything else. However, I find myself richer by one way of thinking about my decision.

That's the way I make use of rules of thumbs in every discipline I am learning: I learn how people think about the various elements that make up a work, in order to find my own way of thinking and deciding. It may not improve my work, but it does enhance the process of creating it: for me, that is.

So, when I have to decide on using color the next time, I may or may not remember that one person thought that colors call the attention to the clothes while B/W concentrates on the person as such. If I want to depict someone's soul, however, I will take the picture with the lens cap on.

Another such rule of thumb I take with a grain of salt is the doctrine that you have to envision your picture before taking the camera out of its bag (or trivial variants of the same). It's an equally valid and attractive way to work on existing material until it shapes up. I know directors who develop the shape of a play during the rehearsals, at times much to the chagrin of the actors. I know of painters who develop their pictures while interacting with the canvas, paint and brushes. So why not apply that to photographs?

Obviously, I am under no obligation to produce results.

[dant]

While true to a point, sometimes color will grab our attention to study areas that we may have not noticed.

 

I let the pix tell me what is best, not preconceived ego.

[Your Old Dog]

.............................................

.

Another such rule of thumb I take with a grain of salt is the doctrine that you have to envision your picture before taking the camera out of its bag (or trivial variants of the same). It's an equally valid and attractive way to work on existing material until it shapes up. I know directors who develop the shape of a play during the rehearsals, at times much to the chagrin of the actors. I know of painters who develop their pictures while interacting with the canvas, paint and brushes. So why not apply that to photographs?

 

Obviously, I am under no obligation to produce results.

 

I am certainly with you on this one. I do not have the ability to "envision" before I trip the shutter. I recognize a nice image in the street but the real art of my work (if there is any) comes when I get it back to the computer and can make the image say through the computer what the camera and lens could not. I think if you could give me enough mega-pixels to work with I could generate 5- wall hangers from one camera scene simply by cropping and playing with light values. I give the camera absolutely no say on when the picture is finished, I determine that at the computer. I am not a purist in anything, I am analogue in nature and not a digital yes or no thinking human being !!

[Paul J]

For my commercial work a large part of the job is pre-visualising and planning. No matter how much you plan, it rarely works out exactly as you intended as there are always way to many variables involved.

 

It's too easy to miss shots, or not take shots because it's not in keeping with your pre-vis. I think it's best to have an idea of what you want but be open to the magic, co-incidence, and chance of the moment.

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