New work with my M10 Monochrom -any questions?

[jaapv]

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On 8/12/2025 at 3:04 AM, ramarren said:

Hmm. That analogy doesn't work for me. I did B&W rendering of my color cameras' raw data because there were no B&W digital cameras when I started doing it, and rendering to monochrome from a color dataset is a simple reduction of the data as its basis. It lent certain advantages too: you could simulate the action of B&W filters in rendering the channels differently. Going the other way ... colorizing B&W images ... is essentially adding information that you're making up out of nothing but your imagination. There's no color data in the B&W file, you have to add data to it to create a color rendering. 

But if colorizing B&W produces results that you're pleased with, nothing wrong. It just seems a little odd to me. I tend to think of photography as recording and subtracting away things that distract, rather than building up "fictitious" or imaginary information that wasn't recorded in the first place.  

G

I see photography as creating. Just reproducing reality is too limited for me. Personally I find colorizing an interesting process which can add quite a bit. It is quite traditional, in the past colorizing etchings was common. 

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[pgh]

20 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Just reproducing reality

Is challenging enough to last a lifetime and never master it. The picture’s connection to reality is the only interesting left about photography to my mind. 

With the way generative imaging is going, there is less and less need for a camera to simply create a photographic looking image, so why use one? 
 

in the past colorizing was often, even primarily used to make monochrome pictures closer to reality, because there was no better alternative (ie no color film). There are of course exceptions but they tend to be rare. Ed Templeton comes to mind. 

Edited August 15 by pgh

[jaapv]

IT is not about the technical skills, it is more about creating something that recreates the vision of the photographer. How to rate an abstract photograph for instance? 

[Luke_Miller]

1 hour ago, pgh said:

While a fun novelty it’s so far off base from reality I can’t imagine using it this way. Isn’t the point of a mono camera to let go - like truly let go - of the impulse to render in color? 

I supose it is for some, maybe many. For most of my photographic journey I shot B&W film as it was all that was available/affordable.  Once color film became practical for me I shot everything in color.  Now I consider whether colors make the image or if it is subtle details and tonal shifts.  My photography is all preplanned with specific subjects in mind so I carry the appropriate camera.  But sometime I come across something I did not anticipate.  Then a B&W conversion of a color image might be in order or a color conversion of a B&W capture. Currently the color conversions are a bit unsophisticated and can take some fiddling to get the colors reasonably correct.  I suspect they will become better over time.  It is just an option I like to have available.  Of course all color images are conversions of the luminance-only output of the digital sensor. I remember the days when it was standard to have several demosaic post processors in order to obtain color that were satisfactory. W've come a long way.

[pgh]

1 hour ago, jaapv said:

IT is not about the technical skills, it is more about creating something that recreates the vision of the photographer. How to rate an abstract photograph for instance? 

The technical facet is only one (small) part of translating reality in a moving way. I agree the vision, or ability to see or perceive what is worth seeing in this world, and using a camera to translate this in a compelling way,  that is the more important part. 

A picture can be abstract and also a very explicit rendering of reality - they are not mutually exclusive.
 

As for how to rate it - well that is highly subjective - does it move the viewer in one way or another? What is it saying? Most are not good at all, some are among the most transcendent photographs ever made. 
 

Again I am just speaking for myself and what I find interesting. After the fact sorts of photographic manipulation were interesting for a long time, but with AI most of it becomes quite boring because anything is possible and so easily - the exception being experimental analogue work. The rest of it, the direct translation of some facet of reality is the most interesting part and if that part isn’t good on its own I sense that the picture generally fails. 

[jaapv]

I don’t regard colorizing as a specific AI manipulation although it may use this as an aid. I regard it as a way to reach the look I sometimes want. And no, there is no law that colours must correspond to reality. If fact, in most cases including “OOC" they don’t. 

[pgh]

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1 hour ago, jaapv said:

I don’t regard colorizing as a specific AI manipulation although it may use this as an aid. I regard it as a way to reach the look I sometimes want. And no, there is no law that colours must correspond to reality. If fact, in most cases including “OOC' they don’t. 

It's a branch of AI manipulation.

But it's true, color is just a more subtle lie than BW.  

That's why I tend to prefer mono, it announces its disconnect immediately, and then you can take it for what it is. Color traffics somewhere closer to the real thing, but it is never correct. So yea, there is no pure or totally honest representation of reality, but the intent and the content matter greatly despite what all the critics have said. Most AI manipulations are some version of "to look good" or "to see what I could do" - valid in their own right but almost universally totally boring beyond observing what tech can do. 

This isn't about rules, there are none of course. It's about what makes photography actually interesting. 

[jaapv]

Here is an example of an image that was improved by converting to B&W and recolorizing in PS:

The only thing left to do is to run a colour brush over one leg of Jeans. 

[jaapv]

And this is a colourized M9M image ( you have seen it before) that really made me happy:

 

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[jaapv]

And here another one, meant to attain a vintage effect, in keeping with the subject.

 

[pgh]

Hey Jaap, 

I am not sure what you are trying to prove. Obviously these are subjective things and I grant that tastes vary widely, but personally, I get nothing from any of these. My point about what is interesting stands just the same.  

[jaapv]

Not proving anything. There is nothing to prove when discussing techniques and results. The only thing I object to is the idea that a photograph must mimic reality and is nothing more than a passive moment in time. I thought  that was settled in the early twentieth century. 

[pgh]

30 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Not proving anything. There is nothing to prove when discussing techniques and results. The only thing I object to is the idea that a photograph must mimic reality and is nothing more than a passive moment in time. I thought  that was settled in the early twentieth century. 

I never said it must.

I said for me it's the only interesting left about photography.

Decades of cynical post-modernist criticism about the disconnect between photography and reality aside (and their philoshophy's use for authoritarians set aside), this is not the early twentieth century. Times change. 100 years ago the camera was the easiest and fastest way towards realizing many fantastical images someone might want to create - and they did that, scrambling the idea of the photograph. Now though, that tool is the computer - we can see everything we possibly want - create images limited only by our imagination and technical skill (maybe) - and it's resulted in a glut of millions of fantastical and mediocre jpgs drowning the world and our consciousness. That's a different norm that requires updated notions. 

[jaapv]

Yes, but that can only be judged by culling the images by content with complete disregard of the technical process. 

We must realize that a very large part of this tsunami of images was meant to copy reality as exactly as possible without any photographic pretense. Valuable as they may be to the makers and their social circle, they can be readily discounted when discussing photography as such. I would suggest that number of serious photographers is not much different from the past. 

[ramarren]

On 8/15/2025 at 5:21 AM, jaapv said:

I see photography as creating. Just reproducing reality is too limited for me. Personally I find colorizing an interesting process which can add quite a bit. It is quite traditional, in the past colorizing etchings was common. 

That's fine, if that's what works for you. I see no point to arguing about these things. It's obvious that my photographic meme points me in different directions from that, but there's no point to arguing that my meme is better or worse than any other. 

G

[jaapv]

Why should you argue that way??? I don’t. How do you see your photography then?