Hello world….again!

Yesterdays post focused on the beauty and power of monochromes. I guess today we will play with color but talk about B&W. Perfectly strange I guess.

Whether I am shooting color or B&W on my digital cameras, I am always making a B&W JPG along side of a RAW (if I am even shooting raw). The reason I do this is to see the tones of the scene in monochrome and do away with the distraction of color. I think color, most of the time, is a distraction and jacks up our composition. We see lines and form better and more clearly in B&W. We always have. When my son Scout was born, we were told that the first books you buy a baby are bold B&W graphic element books. Because babies can not see as well as we can until they are around 6months B&W  is the simplest thing to understand, the contrast will hold their attention more  plus looking at zebras and pandas all day is pretty cool as a kid. So why wouldn’t that carry through as an adult? I think it does. Most of the photographs that are good enough to be etched into my brain from past masters are B&W. Very few color images reside up there. Maybe its just me but I think 90% of the time a scene in B&W is stronger than the same scene in color.
So try the B&W jpg thing and tell me I am wrong. You will see things that you wouldn’t have seen in the scene had you previewed in color.

SO…..the hard thing is remembering what shots I see in color and what shots stay B&W. These are a select few that made the cut for me in color…

Keep on clickin’

parker j