25. Black and White or Color?

I talk more about black and white than I do about color.  I love black and white, the traditional darkroom, and the smell of hypo in the morning!  I guess that makes me a black and white guy.  I really do appreciate and enjoy color, don’t get me wrong, but I get more emotionally involved in the worlds of tonality and contrast rendered in black and white.  I see color but I feel black and white when I look at a photograph. Color gets in the way sometimes.  It is like one design element too many.  No distractions in black and white.  Got to have guts.

If you do shoot color, do something special with it, be different, find your own palette.  Shoot definite, powerful color, like La Chapelle color or Pete Turner color.  Make a colorful “statement” with your color, USE your color, or why bother?  De-saturated color is big these days via the computer.  A hint of color, I guess.  A little bit like toning a black and white print in the past. It looks nice, is subtle, but is not really a commitment to a color palette.  Gonna use color these days, grow a pair!  Rock the world and show them they were color blind before they saw your world of color!  Otherwise, color is good for food, fashion, birthday parties, and sunsets.  Black and white is good for your soul.

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.”  Claude Monet

“Black and white are the true colors of photography.”  Robert Frank