"Color (photography) is descriptive. Black and white (photography) is interpretive" Elliot Erwitt The above pictures were taken by Joe Loudermilk, our leader today in the discussion of color vs black & white photography. The entire presentation will be sent by Joe directly to f8 contributors and friends...it was too big to enclosed within this blog. Needless to say the discussion was wide ranging and contibuted to by all in attendance. It was hard to capture all that was said and my notes don't do justice to the quality of the discussion...but here are some highlights I noted. B&W photography was manipulated in camera (different ASAs and film types) as well as in darkroom. It gradually became less "visible" as print media went from B&W to color reproductions....color became the standard. The aesthetic of B&W has persisted to the current time. Color has had its own aesthetic largely defined early on by the film itself (Kodachrome vs Ektachrome for example. This was coupled with variations in darkroom production techniques. Color accentuated the Roland Barthes example of a visual "punctum" being present in all pictures...in B&W it was a point in the picture; with color it could be a point of color. The discussion moved to the differences between actual B&W and color images converted to B&W by numerous programs available in PS and plug-ins like NIK / Silver Effects Pro. These conversions have almost an infinite number of ways to arrive at an artist acceptable final version. Joe used examples provided by f8'ers in his presentation. Some examples pointed out how details can be de-highlighted in the conversion so that an initial conversion may need further tweaking to arrive at an acceptable image. For those not there, review Joe's presentation and send additional comments. For those there last Saturday, send me additional comments on points I have missed in this blog post It was a great session...thank you Joe Actually we started the meeting with a discussion of the recent shootings of two black men and the shooting of police in Dallas. All three incidents were caught on video and published to social media instantly...without context and filtering.
Our discussion centered on whether this "instant" publishing helps or hinders our efforts to foster social, political or societal changes. We would like to think that such immediate "reporting" would move change more quickly within society....but it's less than clear...making problems visible...it will shame society into changing. On the other hand, violence is already a steady part of our media and we are de-sensitized to the issues at this point as our politicians remained deadlocked on taking any action.
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