Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2016/03/19

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Subject: [Leica] Monochrom(e) photos
From: jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols)
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2016 20:54:26 -0500
References: <963E3C4B-C720-49BE-BDE0-7B551B701303@bex.net>

Howard,

I think your B&W photos do a great job of capturing the splendor and 
character of a past age.  The darker images are impressive and appropriate.

Hospitalitas is beautiful!

Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA

On 3/19/2016 7:39 PM, Howard Ritter wrote:
> 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
>
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>




Replies: Reply from hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter) ([Leica] Monochrom(e) photos)
In reply to: Message from hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter) ([Leica] Monochrom(e) photos)