Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2011/04/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Apr 14, 2011, at 8:35 PM, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote: > Not trolling at all. I was just curious. Many of the pictures that you post > in and around Alicante are about people too, yet you usually shoot in > color. > I reject Dr. Ted's pat aphorism that when you photograph people in color, > you photograph their clothes but when you shoot B&W you photograph their > soul. Color merely adds an extra creative dimension. Used wisely it > enhances > an image. Ask Rembrant, Bonnard, Matisse, Van Gogh or any of their crowd. > Even the 10,000 year old cave drawings used color. Photographers developed > a > B&W fetish because color was technically difficult to use for more than > half > of photography's history. Imagine Matthew Brady's problem trying to > photograph the US Civil war in color using the wet collodion process. If > B&W > was esthetically superior, charcoal drawings would predominate in fine art. > Besides, I'm cheap enough to feel that I've wasted my money if I shoot B&W > pictures using a digital camera capable of taking beautiful color images. > With film and paper prints it was a different story. all good and important arguments Larry, but what makes a photo great is what it does to the emotions, and to the memory.... it must hit the heart, hit the mind, and ultimately it must hit the soul and the emotions... color is everywhere, everywhere.... sometimes riotous, sometimes subdued, imo it's a poor excuse by itself to take a photo...we don't take photos because they are in bw, we take them because they have some particular/special content... Once a photo is taken, the color is often secondary, and sometimes distracting from the reason the photo was taken. That's likely the real reason why there are many great bw photos... Steve