[Leica] Monochrom(e) photos

[hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter)]

I?ve always been drawn to B&W photos, both to make them and to appreciate 
them. All photographers who aren't color blind have had the experience of 
wondering whether an image would look better in color or in B&W, probably 
for many shared reasons and for some idiosyncratic ones as well. The common 
experience is to look at two versions of a photo and to decide that the B&W 
looks better than the color, or not, but I can?t recall ever thinking that 
only the B&W version was pleasing and worthwhile to look at. Why should 
draining the color out of an unremarkable image make looking at it 
worthwhile? If a photograph is a representation of reality seen from one 
point in space, looking in one direction, at one instant in time, what is it 
that causes removing an aspect of reality?color?to render the image more 
worthwhile, or even moreso, to render the B&W version worthwhile when the 
color one was not? For me, in photos that are better in B&W, I think it?s 
the removal of color as a distraction from the dynamic or the tension of the 
tableau caught in the image, and the way this emphasis involves the viewer 
more intimately in the story. Nothing original in that analysis, of course, 
but just how powerful this effect can be was just brought home to me by some 
recent B&W photos I made.

Thinking about my affinity for B&W (considerably stimulated by Lluis?s work 
with the MM and by Jim Shulman?s, Chris Crawford?s, and others' film work) 
and how I?d gotten largely away from it with the advent of digital, I 
decided to trade up to an MM when Leica made me the offer for my 
sensor-corroded M9.

Cynthia and I, as new residents of North Carolina, this week made the 
obligatory pilgrimage to Biltmore, the 19th-century pile that George 
Vanderbilt built at Asheville with his grandfather?s fortune. No McMansion, 
but a bona fide one. Huge, complex, with massive stonework, endless features 
and surprises, and more of everything (except a darkroom and an observatory) 
than anyone would ever need, it would be a prime venue for Victorian-themed 
dinner mysteries, Halloween parties, and all manner of creepy doings, as 
well as a prime candidate for the kind of decrepitude that follows with 
being made for a vastly different era and vastly greater fortunes, as seen 
in British grand manor houses that haven?t been rescued by the Trust. 
Instead, it?s become the nidus of a vast entrepreneurial project, with 
scandalous admission fees, season passes (!), themed tours, gift shops, a 
cafe and a lunch restaurant, a winery, theme-faithful hostelries, etc. I 
concede that it?s worth a day?s visit.

I took the MM along and was pleased to find that a number of features of the 
house made for B&W photos that I found quite pleasing, many of which would 
be quite ordinary and not worth posting to the Gallery had they been in 
color. For the most part, these images are dark ones that convey a sense of 
vague menace or something sinister glimpsed in a reflection. The copper pots 
and pans are not an exception to this, although I think they?d have looked 
good in color.

Biltmore and personal effects. A guidebook and, inexplicably, a pair of 
eyeglasses left at a vista point.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/Biltmore+and+personal+effects.jpg.html
 
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/Biltmore+and+personal+effects.jpg.html>

Fountain. In the wall at the base of the south slope.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/Fountain.jpg.html?g2_fromNavId=x4b127eeb
 
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/Fountain.jpg.html?g2_fromNavId=x4b127eeb>

Copper Pots. The kitchen's originals, having been used to prepare dishes for 
every kind of person from heads of state to humble servants.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/CopperPots.jpg.html
 
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/CopperPots.jpg.html>

Vanderbilt. George himself, a bibliophile, who, judging from the portraits 
in the house, liked to pose with his left hand over his upper right chest.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/Vanderbilt.jpg.html
 
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/Vanderbilt.jpg.html>

Gun Room. Lots of shotgun hunting on the grounds back in the day.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/GunRoom.jpg.html 
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/GunRoom.jpg.html>

Hospitalitas. Stained glass at the wine shop.
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/Hospitalitas.jpg.html
 
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/Hospitalitas.jpg.html>

Wine Library. In the catacombs beneath the winery, a former dairy barn (??). 
A rivulet of an unknown fluid emerging from the dark depths?
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/WineLibrary.jpg.html
 
<http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/For+Gallery_001/WineLibrary.jpg.html>

C&C appreciated.

?howard