It’s Black and White

Years ago I got to have a long talk with the illustrator Kelly Freas and we found common ground in believing that black and white is a superior artistic medium to color.  I’m a sucker for fine b&w drawings and my first love in photography was Ansel Adams.

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I pulled out some old proof sheets, from our road trip back in 2001, and started scanning in a few negatives. These were 120 format, 2 X 2, which I like for the sharpness and lack of grain.  Sometimes I still miss having a darkroom, the smell of the chemicals, and the magic of watching an image appear in the tray, little by little, growing before my eyes, details filling in.  As much as I’ve been enjoying working with digital—and certainly I don’t really miss the messiness of traditional photofinishing—I wonder where kids find the “magic” of that first print.

I’ve been doing more color with digital as well and I need to shift that back to black & white.  There’s a clarity, a “cleanness” to black & white that color never quite achieves.

I thought I’d share a couple of these with you today.

 

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One thing working with these has given me, though, is an urge to do that trip again.  I got some great shots and I’ve done far too little with them.  I could spend the next two years doing nothing but scanning and processing the photographs in that file.

But I’d start with the black & white first.

Have a good weekend.

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