Black & White & Colour
Using a traditional darkroom is a revelation for me. I’ve spent the last four days in a darkroom with developer, stop bath and fixer making contact prints from my Indian and Nepal images that I shot earlier this year.
What I didn’t expect was to fall in love with the black and white photographic print. I also didn’t expect to have my head turned from thinking about images in colour and appreciating them in their monochromatic form.
Take this image for example. Firstly, I can’t even specifically remember shooting it, which is a revelation in it’s own right as I often have the most memorable images imprinted in my mind when I come home. So it was great to discover this little treasure. It was shot in a UNESCO heritage site called Baktapur, which is in the Kathmandu valley, perhaps an hour away from central Kathmandu.
I love the composition although it’s flawed in some ways. I’d have liked to have had the silver jug at the bottom of the frame removed, or burned in so much that it’s less distracting, but that’s not easy in something like Photoshop without really screwing up the image. But I’m not too precious. It’s the girls pose that works for me, combined with her dress. It’s rather candid yet I was standing a few feet away from her, down at her level. I’m a bit foreward at times, not in a demaning way – i’m quite discreet and will just find myself in the middle of the action while in this case there was preparation for some festival going on. I have to get in close…. that’s the only way to get decent impact or presence.
Ah but then again, as much as I loved the shot in colour, it was really something else to make a black and white print of it on Monday. There’s something lovely in the texture of the girls dress that draws me in. The above image is just a desaturated version of the file above – I don’t have the means to reproduce a real black and white print here, but suffice to say that it has a quality and impact that’s hard to convey. Regardless of this small issue, I feel the image has now transformed into something else. It has an ‘old world’ element to it, and I bet that most folks would think it was shot a few decades ago at the very least or perhaps early last century.
Which do you prefer, if you discount my own feelings on the matter?
I love both (naturally, I have that invested emotional connection with my own images).
Both are wonderful, Bruce and I cna only imagine how nice the traditional B&W print would look in person.
If I had to pick one though, I think I’d go with the color version for only one reason: The woman standing behind her has fingernail polish the same color as the girl’s dress. Almost invokes an image of “what lies ahead”. In other words, the older woman used to be the child in the pink dress.
I agree though, the B&W print has a definite timeless quality.
Good work.
Mark Olwick
Comment by olwick — 2 July, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
I know the feeling all to well. Sometimes it is hard to make this “artistic” decision in which both color and B&W are equally pleasing. i guess some times simply both options have there own merit. in this particular case I prefer the colored one but only becuse at the moment I am myself in my color portrait stage.
cheers
Marc
Comment by Marc Ilford — 2 July, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
I’d go for black and white ’cause blue colors on the background somehow distract me.
Comment by goosetea — 2 July, 2009 @ 3:47 pm
Ha – and I’d go for the colour one _because_ of the blue!
I much prefer the colour version here, but there’s no way that a desaturated version even approaches a good B&W conversion, let alone a print. Have you had a play with NIK’s Silver EFX ? You might enjoy it…
Apart from that, the colours are so clearly not digital that even there thers’s a “retro” look. I would dare to suggest that aside from the geometry, this image is about colour, not light.
I think a successful B&W image has to start off with B&W in mind.
Comment by David Mantripp — 2 July, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
For me it has to be the colour image. It is packed with description. The silver pot at the bottom is less obvious in the B&W version but at what cost. The composition is the same but the colours are too important to let them go just for that. It would be better to crop the image, though I’d leave it as it is and learn from the ‘mistake’.
If only all ‘mistakes’ were like that :-)
I wonder if B&W photography would ever have existed if they’d have been able to produce colour images from the beginning.
Comment by jeremy — 2 July, 2009 @ 6:47 pm
Hi Bruce,
I shoot both color and B&w, but I’m partial to B&W. To me, B&W lets you look at the subject more, for instance, in this photo it’s the little girl and her dress; the design of it. In the color photo I have a tendency to look at the colors first then, maybe, the subject; what’s she thining or what is being told to her. That’s what comes to mind.
B&W basically is classic and for me you can say more in B&w than in color. That is one reason, on my photoblog, I run the Weekly B&W Square Photo, it is sort of a tribute to all thoses older 120, 220 and 126 b&w films of the past.
There is just something about a B&W photo that just won’t go away, even a bad one; like I’m sure I do a lot. But that’s just my humble opion.
I like the B&W photo better.
Comment by gc — 2 July, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
Bruce,
I just wanted to tell you that I have admired your work for a month or so now. As for which I prefer, that has to be the color because I believe that is how you meant it to be.
I find that I think differently when shooting color from b&w (bold colors vs. texture).
It is true that the desaturated version has a lot of texture, but in the first you managed to capture fantastic colors and texture.
Regardless if the jug is a distracting element, the image is very strong.
Comment by antonandreas — 2 July, 2009 @ 11:27 pm
I love black and white photography but in this case I prefer the colour version. The colours are beautiful and evocative and like you say the photo looks as if it could have been taken a hundred years ago.
I’d like to see a sepia or split toned version of the black and white photo.
Comment by andrewgibson — 3 July, 2009 @ 8:38 am
Hi all,
thanks for the input. Very interesting reading. Some folks had very firm views while others liked both. Half liked the colour one (for different reasons) and others like the black and white one.
I wasn’t really asking for a competition between the two, but I guess it’s inevitable that it gets interpreted that way.
I was really just trying to point out that the same image can convey a completely different feeling if it’s in black and white.
I feel both images have their pros as well as their cons.
But what was often omitted was the fact that (in my opinion) it’s a very strong image.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 3 July, 2009 @ 6:55 pm
Touche :-)
Glenn
Comment by gc — 3 July, 2009 @ 7:33 pm