Photography Article Black and White Book Club: week 2|Photography Artist Statement

Welcome to the first full-length week of this month's Black and White Book Club study of Michael Freeman's The Complete Guide to Black and White Digital Photography (or the pocket-sizedBlack and White Photography Field Guide). Be sure to read the overview and week 1 posts if you are just joining in. Everyone is welcome to participate, even without a copy of either book, but if you do have the book, you will have more to draw on during the month.

Week 2 (Feb. 3rd-9th) will focus on Black and White Photography as Normality and the photographic styles and subjects of still life, landscape, street, portrait, architecture, and journalism or documentary photography. We will be covering pgs. 24-45/22-43 (optional processing pages: 69-81/66-79).

Black and White as Normality

In these chapters, Freeman presents an historical overview of the progression from black and white to color in photography and focuses in on this counter-intuitive notion that black and white became seen as the normal representation of events and the world, persisting in newspapers through the 1980s.  "How and why this happened is worth considering, because the decades of black-and-white 'normality' impressed the monochrome image with a particular strength and legitimacy" (pg. 24/22).

He includes a variety of quotations from famous photographers at the time concerning their thoughts about black and white vs. color photography, including Walker Evans' adaptation,  "'Color tends to corrupt photography and absolute color corrupts absolutely'" (pg. 27/27). Looking backwards from our colorized present, do you agree or disagree? We can flip the question from last week and ask, "When and where it would be better to shoot color" (pg. 29/28). Is your default thought color photography or black and white photography? How (or does it) influence how you shoot?

Later chapters preserve to push this difficulty of conscious preference and the belief of what is or is not higher suitable to black and white compared to shade. Freeman gives several facet-via-side comparisons of pix in both colour and black and white to permit an instantaneous evaluation. Consider posting a shade comparison this week in a further album in order that we are able to examine the 2 and consider the relative deserves of each.

Here, I choose the black and white model as it minimizes the distraction of coloured coats and allows your interest to recognition at the traces, form, and repetition of humans.

While the point of interest of these chapters is on 'normality' and forms of pictures which includes road, documentary, and journalism images, you can additionally take these thoughts and apply them more broadly, encompassing subjects such as still lifestyles, panorama, portrait, and structure images. Spend time this week thinking about how your perceptions of 'normal' are motivated or even tricked by using the use of black and white for such topics.

Delving in to "Digital Monochrome" chapters

Based on an informal survey of book club participants on 365project.org, it seems like many of you are planning to post-process your images into black and white (rather than just shooting monochrome in-camera). Section 2: The Digital Monochrome is a section of the book that is not officially 'assigned' for any week but contains a plethora of useful information about digitally manipulating images for black and white output. I will include a few thoughts each week about chapters within this section then for those who post-process.

Initial massive ideas from the first few chapters (pgs. Sixty nine-81/66-seventy nine) encompass a look at the 3 distinctive coloration channels that make up a single image (blue, purple, green) and the way every channel on my own renders a totally distinct version of the image in black and white. Additionally, you may use spotlight healing gear with RAW files to try to reconstruct missing (clipped) records in one channel with the aid of the usage of facts in another channel. One channel also can be prioritized to avoid the virtual noise extra seen in other channels.

Elements, just like the crimson sign and flag, seem very otherwise in the one-of-a-kind channels.

Are you the use of the 3 channels in a different way whilst you are processing your pix? If so, don't forget sharing which you used (and why) for your photo caption or in the comments. This will be a exquisite opportunity for every person to research new talents in our processing as well as in all the different elements of our pictures.

Multiple Ways to Join the Book Club

Want to participate? Post a comment with your thoughts or a link to a picture you have taken for the Book Club and an explanation of how the book influenced your image. Or, you can post pictures and contribute to the discussion by joining the Photography Book Club Group on Flickr.

Parting phrases for the week, from Robert Frank, "'Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the options of desire and despair to which all mankind is subjected'" (pg. 29/29). Read extra approximately Robert Frank and spot examples of his black and white photos at his Artsy web page.

Click here to examine the post for Week three.

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