Re: (NNG) B&W vs Color (pics)

John Craft Wrote:
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> I don't think trying to "get the same effect now as
> was then" is a common goal in photography.
>
> Also, how you view photography on a "creativity <--->
> documentation" scale will affect your answer to this.

and Greg Scholl Wrote:
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> ... So, why go backwards to B&W, just because you can???



ALL of the following is just my OPINION, so instead of adding "IMHO" to the front of every sentence, I'll just write it once here.

John's post seems to answer Greg's question in advance -

Displaying photos in B&W is not "going backwards", it is just going in another direction. B&W seems to me, in many ways, "more creative" than color - or at least color that hasn't been overly manipulated and records the scene pretty much 'as observed'.

Unadultered Color - as in the slides many of us took from the mid- or late fifties through about 2005 - tells the viewer what was there, at that time, from the perspective of the photographer.  B&W is more subjective - it allows the viewer more leeway to interpret the scene according to his or her own mood, memories and point-of-view.  Just yesterday, in searching for the famous original "wheel and gloves" photo that was the inspiration for the shot I posted on [ngdiscussion.net] Monday evening, I looked through three books of Dick Steinheimer's photos - 'A Passion for Trains', 'Done Honest & True' and 'Whistles Across the Land'. The B&W photos in the first two - even the photos of diseasels - caught my attention FAR more than the color photos - even the photos of Steam - in the third.

On the "documentation <---> creativity"* scale that John mentioned, it seems to me that B&W - being more abstract - is inherently more to the creative (right brain) side than the full realism of unadulterated color on the left.  Of course there have been - and are - great photographers whose photos documenting reality are worthy of display not just in history museums but also on calendars and in galleries. Link and Steinheimer, of course, who covered the last years of the Age of Steam on the east and west coasts, and our own John West, whose photos of steam all over the world are both accurate documentation of their subjects and beautiful images in their own right, and also several others - many of whom post here on the NGDF - whose photos often cover(ed) a large part of this 'documentation - creativity' spectrum in a single image.

*****

If you'll indulge me, I'd like to illustrate the B&W vs Color debate with three photos of my own, taken within ten days or so of each other in October, 1975.

The first shows the American Freedom Train departing Mountain Home, Idaho (just east of Boise) following a servicing stop. The day was overcast and the colors muted, so I was shooting Plus-X negative film in my Mamiya RB67. If this shot were in color, I think the red-and-white squares of the Purina building in the background would pull the viewers eyes away from the main subject - the bright yellow U.P. diesels (just kidding). Also, the weeds in the foreground would probably seem much more intrusive. In B&W there is an interesting contrast in the textures of the weeds and sky versus the smooth sides of the locomotives that would be overwhelmed by the jumble of red-white-&-blue and yellow:


The second, an EktaChrome slide, has been reproduced in a couple of calendars over the years, so some of you may have seen it before.  Here #4449 is about to enter the East Portal of Cascade Tunnel, Washington; it's pretty much an old-fashioned "wedge" shot, but with a splash of color in an otherwise muted photo, and a plume of smoke swirling about the train to add a touch of drama (and hide the diseasel helpers):


The third was taken about two hours later, after the train had descended the pass and stopped for servicing at Skykomish, WA. The day was growing increasingly dark and drizzly, so I was again using Plus-X negative film. IIRC, it had rained a bit when I shot this, and I almost gave up to take shelter in my car.  These last two are pretty similar, so comparing them is a good illustration of B&W versus Color:


- Russ

p.s. Here's another photo originally taken as a 6x7 cm negative on Plus-x B&W film, about 18 months later at Mott, CA (north of Dunsmuir) as #4449 returned to Portland pulling the Transcontinental Steam Excursion. The little shed - and cabeese - were long gone when I passed through Mott in late 2002.:


The neg is big enough that it's not too bad even when cropped to about one-third of it's original area:



* I have reversed John's scale from 'creativity <---> documentation' to 'documentation <---> creativity' to coincide with the left-brain / right-brain specialization first noticed and investigated by my uncle, Roger W. Sperry.



Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2011 10:40PM by Russo Loco.