The Glory of Black and White 2012-01

Over the weekend, I took time off from our regular work to do some black-and-white images.

Some people see in color, and some people see in black and white. Arnie and I see in both.

What it really is all about is seeing values. You know, that range from lights to darks. As did Arnie, I started out in black and white, but for me, it was with my trusty Brownie Hawkeye. Some of those images that I made when I was eight stand the test of time today. But that’s not the point of this blog except that I have been around black and white for a very long time. Even when I was shooting mostly color, I was also admiring the black-and-white photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Edward Curtis, J. Walker Evans, and a plethora of others.

There were some images from Death Valley that I knew at the time would make good black and whites.

As those of you know who follow this blog, we ran into the sand/dust storm of all storms in Death Valley last month. Locals hadn’t seen anything like it in decades. While it was challenging to keep the camera safe, it was also great for photographs. The one above was made when the storm was beginning. The valley floor was still clear, but the mountains and hills were being obscured as the storm got lower and lower.

I didn’t want to lose that feeling of the storm lurking above the desert floor. I had already processed my color image, but after I took it over into nik Silver Efex Pro*, I brought it back into Lightroom to complete my tweaking. In this case, I wished to maintain the subtle outline of the mountains across the desert floor, so I darkened the exposure in that upper part of the image and brought out a little more detail in the salt ridges in the foreground to contrast with the storm.

Very often, I vignette by darkening the edges to draw the eye into my subject, but in this case, I actually lightened the edges a tad to lessen the impact of the salt lines as they drifted out of the frame.

In the next image, there were signs of the storm in the distance. The “scooty” rock in its setting was my subject, which meant that I could not allow the mountains to intrude too much.

Again, I took my image over into nik for my base black-and-white conversion, did my normal tweaks there, then

The Glory of Black and White

I was delighted to be interviewed by Scott Sheppard on nik Software Radio/TV. It’s always an honor to take part in a program that celebrates different aspects of photography, and Scott is an easy host with a delightful sense of humor. It was fun to reminisce, to talk about my early start with a camera, and share my passion for and approach to photography. Scott even asked about Arnie’s and my philosophy in our workshops.

That interview is now published on nik Radio, but you will have to look for the 10/20/11 date, as it is not obvious where to find the name of the person being interviewed.

When nik first came out with their software, I was hooked. I don’t promote programs and plug-ins per se, but if we find a program that makes our lives easier, I’m not adverse to sharing. After all, we get no kick-backs!

So, where is this taking me this time? I got my first camera, a Brownie Hawkeye, at age eight, and I photographed in black and white. Gradually, I took to color, but I always admired black-and-white photography.

Edward Curtis was an early idol. I loved his sepia tones and elegant composition. Henri Cartier-Bresson was my next discovery. My father and grandmother lived in Paris for a spell, so I was exposed to this great photographer’s work at an early age. His depictions of life in Paris are arresting to this day. I even got to photograph with him many years ago, but that’s another story in another blog.

After that, there was Richard Avedon, whose work regularly appeared in the fashion magazines my chic mother loved. Later, the of work J. Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White, Eugene Atget, and John Sexton caught my eye.

Of course, there have been many others too numerous to mention, but these people inspired me, even when I was mostly shooting color. The tonality of their images was always magnificent and set a bar for me in my color photography. Even some of my images that are almost monochromatic in color work, because there is a good range of lights to darks in them.

When we first got into digital photography, the learning curve was quite steep, so we mostly stuck to color. As the programs got more sophisticated, and