Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/09/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Adam Bridge offered: Subject: [Leica] Black & White film portraiture making a comeback? WAS: <sigh> Getting into printing.. need advice? Hi Adam, I believe there will always be a market for B&W portraiture. The real shooters who can use film or digital and make smashingly beautiful B&W portraits will always have clients! If they promote themselves properly! And yes maybe there is a come back given it's so much easier to shoot B&W digital and the availability of super fine printing papers today. Simply because it shows people with a greater degree of character than the "always super glorified look of a studio portrait in colour!" Like some embalming undertaker fixed them up for the right colour look we see so often in a portrait! This comment is made due to my undying belief of, "When you photograph people in colour, you photograph their clothes! But when you photograph people in B&W you photograph their souls!" And I've been proven right more times than I can count! Heck just look at the beautiful B&W portraits by KARSH and tell me this isn't so. I knew the man well when I lived in Ottawa, as did I his brother MALAK, another brilliant, but commercial subjects photographer. I don't think the colour portraits KARSH shot hold a candle to what he produced in B&W! And if he were still alive I bet he'd agree with me. Today where so many are shooting digital portraiture there are papers that defy a viewer to say whether it's digital or film! Heavy beautiful double weight paper with all the feel and look of any wet tray paper. Besides digital cameras have improved so vastly that in the right hands of a talented portrait photographer and printer it's extremely difficult to see or tell the difference in a print of film or digital. I don't doubt there'll be all kinds of rebuts and doubters on that comment! So what! Besides digital is constantly improving and will eventually surpass the qualities of film, maybe not today or tomorrow, but I bet before we see the year 2020! Or sooner. As usual my 2 pennies worth. :-) Have a go lads! :-) ted