Color vs. Black and White

Americana,
originally uploaded by Velvet G.

This I think seals the color vs. black and white debate that I've been trying to carry on for some time now.

There are some who believe that black and white photography is better or more artistic or more serious than color photography. I've been puzzling over this for some time now and from what I have read about photography in various places I believe that I now have the answer to where the attitudes come from and why they are bunk.

Photography originated with black and white, of course. But it wasn't long after it became practical to make and sell photographs that the public started clamoring for color. There wasn't any way to satasfy this desire within the photographic process, though they were able to make nice grayscale images with warm tones that approximated flesh. So the pragmatically turned to tinting the images with color after they were printed. Purist photographers disliked this because the tinting process often muted or destroyed the subtle gradiations of tone that they worked so hard to achieve to make the photographs good in the first place. It was a gimmick, often poorly done, to please the less discerning public.

There have been many attempts to make good quality photographs using a color process from much earlier in history than many people are aware of. There are, for instance, excellent quality color photographs from World War 1. These and the early color motion pictures used a very complex and cumbersome camera system that took three pictures at once with different filters which could then be combined later to make color prints. This color process was extremely fine and accurate, allowing excellent gradiations of tone and exquisite control over the colors during the printing process. Later these options fell out of fashion and became unavailable. During the 1950's and 60's new color film was introduced and promoted with great success, especially by the Kodak company. This made it possible to shoot full color images with a very simple and inexpensive camera. But there were many problems with the new films. For one thing, since all colors were captured on the same film and developed together, the great control enjoyed by those who previously used the three-camera technicolor process was no longer available. The new film did not even render the range of tones and values extremely well. It was lumpy and of poor quality. The prints made from it tended to be too red, if not off in other ways. The color was garish, and the images were comparitively grainy.

During this same period people like Ansel Adams were pushing black and white photography to new hights of quality. They developed exquisite conrol over tonal values by carefully metering their light and controlling every detail of the development process carefully in the darkroom. Photographers of this time were obsessed with those elements that stand out best in black and white photography, including texture, contrast and the range of value. These serious photographers made use of black and white film that was fast, sensitive, and particularly fine-grained. Enabling them to bring out details with a clarity unavailable in color, even at this late date.

Even during this time though, there were those who worked at hand-tinting photographs for advertising purposes, the mass market, posters and effects. Serious black and white photographers looked down on them for much the same reason they did in the early days of photography. Tone and texture were serious, pure photography, and color was a gimmick for the unsophisticated masses, which ruined what made a photograph great.

Today the situation is radically different. I believe that most people are going to digital. Art photographers who work with film are rapidly losing ground when they claim that their medium offers them higher resolution or greater light sensitivity. And digital cameras always shoot in color.

A photograph taken with a digital camera is more like the three-camera, three-filter process than anything else. Exquisite control over color has finally come back to the state of the art, and is available to the common photographer. If a digital camera has a black and white mode, it really isn't doing anything to capture the image any differently. The black and white mode does not allow the camera to capture light without the color filters, those filters are embedded on each pixel of the light sensitive ccd sensor in the camera which takes the place of film. What black and white mode means, is that the microchip in the camera is post-processing the image to remove the color before you get to your computer.

Even if you take a color image, you can go to your computer, upload it and remove the color information. You may gain some apparent clarity in the image, but you will have gained nothing in terms of resolution or sensitivity to values that would be comperable to loading your camera with a high-quality black and white film.

So you have full control of color, even the option to remove it. But you gain no information, no resolution, no sensitivity. Creating a black and white image becomes what it essentially is, a merely artistic decision. A manipulation of a real glimpse for the purpose of effect on the viewer.

Today the manipulation of color, including the amount of saturation, or chromaticity, in any given part of the image makes it possible to bring out in a photograph that which the photographer or artist wishes to stand out as special. It is one of the more interesting techniques in the toolbox of those who would design with the full range of visual properties. And those who do so, and who vary their use of color or its abscence, are for my money, far more artistic than those who cling to the notion that to be serious, or artistic, the photographer must render the world merely in shades of gray.

I'll talk more about why I enjoy the effect of a hand-tinted photograph more another time.

Beware of Camera Scams!

I've been watching prices on digital SLR cameras for a while now, hoping that some alignment of planets or coincidence of payments would enable me to pick one up, and I have noticed a few things in doing so. The first thing I noticed is that ebay does not have the best deals on digital cameras, I find better ones on Amazon. But a few weeks ago someone pointed me towards some online price comparison websites, like www.streetprices.com, and I have been watching the rise and fall of the lowest prices there. This was the first step towards me finding the problem.

The lowest prices reported by that website are dramatically lower than what I have seen on the Amazon marketplace. Low enough that I found it possible to dream that I might be able to scrape up the dough to buy one if the bills would just temporarily roll out to low tide one day. But on Sasha's advice I checked some reviews and I found horror stories.

It turns out that none of the really good looking prices are real at all. The Genius Cameras shop I mentioned in an earlier post as having good deals turns out to be just one of a collection of seedy online retailers, run by the same group of people out of unmarked warehouses in Brooklyn. They are reviewed online by page after page of people who complain about poor treatment from rude sales reps and that they were victims of bait and switch tactics designed to make them buy as extras the acessories that come in the standard box from the manufacturer.

I may even have dealt with such a company when I tried to buy a 3 megapixel Kodak from an online vendor a few years back. I was upsold on an accessory, and became angry when a question I asked about the payment proceedure was answered with "I don't make the rules," a phrase that is already something of a pet peeve of mine. What may have protected me from a bad experience was that with the acessory I didn't originally want to spend money on my order went above the transaction limit of my debit card. Which I found out only later, after cancelling my order because I believed it was taking an inconveniently long time. Ironically, they would have made the sale if they hadn't suggested I buy anything besides what I asked for.

I originally went along with the sale in spite of the off-putting manner of the salesman, figuring that, in New York, that was just the way people were used to talking. But I have learned from the reviews of online merchants I have been reading that it is probably a good idea to trust your instincts about their ways of dealing with you that seem a little seedy.

Here are some of the things I have been reading to learn about the bad camera deals out there:

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,107855,pg,1,00.asp
An older article. The prices offered on compact flash cards seems shockingly high, but they are from years ago. But the tactics described are apparently current, as recent merchant reviews on other sites reveal.
One comment about the "grey market" cameras. If a reputable manufacturer like Nikon, Kodak or Canon is making a nearly identical model to be sold overseas at a lower price then they really have no business complaining about those cameras being diverted for sale here. If they are the same then they have no business refusing to honor the warranty on international models. If the international model is constructed more shoddily than the US model, then they make crap and should be known as manufacturers of crap. I would be incensed if I lived in, the Phillipines, say, and read something like this, implying that the cameras I read reviews for, probably on US websites were built better than those available for sale to me. I'd feel cheeted. And I feel cheated as a US resident, because I strongly suspect that people overseas are getting the same camera, as sturdily built, with multi-lingual menus, including English, for less than I would pay.

It's as if one man approached a merchant wearing an expensive suit, the merchant looked him up and down and quoted a price. And then another man approached wearing a ragged uniform from some blue-collar job and got the same thing for two thirds the price. It just isn't the kind of fair dealing that we have come to expect from merchants. If selling cameras intended for a lower priced market in a high-priced market is a scam, or "grey" business, with shadyness and legal loopholes implied, then I suggest that it is enabled to operate through the scamming or shady operations of the camera manufacturers themselves.

The "grey market" is probably a good thing, which operates towards bringing the prices of these goods to a more fair level.

http://www.resellerratings.com/
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller8519.html
Where I found the sad stories about Genius Cameras hard sell and bait and switch tactics.

Aside from a few known reputable merchants the best place to shop for this kind of stuff may be Amazon. Reputation is as important as price.

As bad as this may be I think I still prefer shopping online though. When I consider the maximum security atmosphere of the last few computer and electronics stores I've been in. But maybe that rant should be for another time.

Venus of Willendorf

WienVenusVonWillendorf0508,
originally uploaded by McManly.

Now available in chocolate.

How to take pictures of skaters

Brent,
originally uploaded by 1234 i declare a thumb war.

This weekend I tried taking some pictures of skaters on my own. I've always wanted to do something like that. I've thought about doing such a shoot from time to time for, well, a long time. And the main things, it always seemed to me, were to be close, to be low and to use a wide angle lens.

The wide angle lens is good, because it makes nearer things seem large and things that are further away seem small. This is fantastic for making someone look like they are far up in the air. Something that never occurred to me before, though, is that a wide angle lens can also help you keep those fast-moving guys in focus because it has an inherently greater depth of field, or depth of focus than narrower lenses. And since it's wide, it might also help you to keep the subject in the frame.



... if that's what you want.

Motion assignment shoot #2

CRW_4471b,
originally uploaded by Reflected Rays.

This is something I have wanted to do for a long time. I have imagined doing a shoot like this from time to time for years. It was great.

Practicing photography has not always been easy. It isn't allowed in some otherwise very good places. Many people have been nervous when they have seen me photographing, for unspecified reasons. When people see a camera, they either fear it or want to ham it up for the picture. The skaters the parents and management at Dirtwood ramp park were different.

These guys like to be photographed. They like to see pictures. And they show off, but by doing what they always do for each other. They concentrate on what they are doing, and aren't always looking at you to see if you got it. It is a very relaxed atmosphere that is a welcome change from the way I have been treated by most other people.