[Leica] Monochrom(e) photos

[Jim Nichols]

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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>