Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2011/04/15

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Subject: [Leica] Barcelona in color
From: billcpearce at cox.net (Bill Pearce)
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:43:08 -0500
References: <BANLkTimw-ABFB5jc=_VAa2FJMt8Y7SHCVw@mail.gmail.com> <2459FC5B-8477-4383-B4BC-F5438055DC77@gmail.com>

If I were to express myself freely, it would probably result in my being 
banned from the internet. To put things simply, I am not pleased with the 
far too common feeling that only B&W photos have value. Larry's writing 
makes more sense than I could and is far more precise and less profane that 
I would put things, but anyway, GO, LARRY!

Bill Pearce

-----Original Message----- 
From: Steve Barbour
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2011 1:25 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] Barcelona in color

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




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Replies: Reply from ricc at embarqmail.com (Ric Carter) ([Leica] Barcelona in color)
In reply to: Message from lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin) ([Leica] Barcelona in color)
Message from steve.barbour at gmail.com (Steve Barbour) ([Leica] Barcelona in color)