Although I love photographing in colour, and digital has made it easier than ever, my photographic roots are in black and white. To the earlier me, the camera was only the capturing part of the photographic process. Then came film development and enlarging images in the darkroom. All in B&W. Colour was tricky and expensive, but B&W processing was, and still is, inexpensive and easy to do.
I experimented with slow films and fast films. Kodak Panatomic-X at ISO 32 and Kodak Tri-X at ISO 400 were my mainstays. I shot medium format with a Rolleiflex 3.5F Planar that I still own, and 35mm with a Pentax H1a and later Olympus OM-1's, all of which I still own. I was inspired by the work of every good B&W photographer I encountered, whether Eugene Smith, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Lee Friedlander, or any of an number of excellent local photographers.
Lake Ontario, 1979
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)Black & White, or to be more accurate, monochrome, images work differently from colour images on two levels: they have a silvery aesthetic to them that is pleasing to the eye, and by eliminating dominant colours, they are more abstract. This lends itself well to images that are primarily about pattern, texture, shape, and chiaroscuro lighting. There is often something particularly mysterious about a B&W image.
Conversation in a Restaurant
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)There is also a timeless quality about monochrome images. They could be taken at nearly any time in the last fifty or more years. The following image of my step-dad (age 90), was taken this year. It could as easily be a photo from the past.
U.L. sawing bench parts
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)Fortunately digital images taken in colour lend themselves to monochromatic interpretations, as in this shot of a dock in the Port Credit Harbour, taken with a Canon Digital Rebel and channel mixed to monochrome, then sepia toned.
Dock, Port Credit
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)Still, there's a magic about shooting B&W film and developing it yourself. Scanning the negatives, for me, eliminates the difficulty of setting up a chemical darkroom for printing which I no longer have time to do. And it gives me a reason to hold on to my little Leica CL as long as film manufacturers make good B&W emulsions. Like most photographers today, I shoot digital for convenience, but there's always room in my photographic life for good B&W film gear.
Birthday Merriment
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)(10-Dec-2003, Revised 17-June-2004)
www.NorthernJourney.com -- gene@wilburn.ca