I should do a black-and-white day…
May 22, 2005, 7:17 PM
Seriously, I should do a black and white day. One day when I go to Washington, I should switch Big Mavica over to black-and-white and see what I can come up with. I think it will make me think differently about how I compose my photos, and kind of break the monotony.
I’ve contemplated doing a photo set or something in black and white before, but I’ve always been a bit timid about actually shooting the originals in black-and-white for fear of missing something good in color, or wishing I’d had something in color that was shot in grayscale. Since you can shoot in color and then convert to black-and-white, but you can’t convert black-and-white to color so easily. But of course, that kind of wimping out really got me far. See any black-and-white photo sets on the site? Answer is that at the time of this writing, there are none there. I shot in color, and thus the photos weren’t designed for black and white. Because when you shoot in color, you think in color. And thus they look funky in grayscale.
Compare for a moment, using the Photo Feature that I ran on April 20 of this year:
I consider this one of my more striking color images, and it certainly made an impression with me when I ran it on the main page. However, when you convert it to black and white, it doesn’t really “work”, since it depends on the color to make things stand out. What you get is a dark image on a dark background. Kind of blah.
I wonder what I can do for a black-and-white shoot. That ought to keep me on my toes, and make for something fresh and new out of me. When will I do it? Not sure yet. This coming Wednesday, May 25, which is the date of my next trip to Washington, is already planned out, and color will be important. But still, who knows. Plus it ought to be a lot of fun, getting all “artsy-fartsy” with the camera again.
Song: Background music from the final scene of Today's Special's "Wishes", where Jeff looks sadly out the window, at what could have been.
Quote: "Black-and-white... hmmm..."
Categories: Photography