Black and White Ramblings

Browsing through various Photo Blogs, I can't help but notice just how popular Black & White photography still is.

Being completely out of touch with monochrome for well over thirty years, I have no idea whether this popularity is an unbroken continuation from the 'good old days' or whether it's a new trend attempting to (re)discover a romantic past. A fascination with all things old and quaint perhaps?

Many of us have fond memories of spending hour upon hour hidden away from the outside world busily bathing photo paper under the cosy red glow of a darkroom light. But it seems there is still a huge active monochrome movement. Even today Ilford B&W film is readily available, and I just couldn't resist buying a couple of rolls of HP5!

Those who read my blog from time to time will know that I finished one film last year and the fairly average results can be seen in the photo gallery (soggy pics) on this site. The second roll of HP5 is still in the old Pentax SLR and will hopefully be processed and developed within the next month or so.

So, Why Monochrome?

I like to think I have a reasonable idea of image composition, but I'm one of the last to boast any sort of artistic talent, in fact reading some blogs and photographer's views on their various works I realise I'm totally out of my depth on the subject. But somehow Monochrome is just fascinating. For me it's as simple as that.

A couple of years ago, whilst visiting England, I stumbled across a copy of 'Black + White Photography' magazine and read it from cover to cover. No I'm not in their employ, and I'm sure there are many other such magazines on the market so I don't intend to sing the magazines praises too loudly, but I have since subscribed and eagerly await the latest issues at the end of the month. My interest in all things Black and White has increased enormously.

In an ideal world it would be very nice to have a camera purely for B&W, The Leica Monochrome springs to mind and would be quite appealing... if only it cost a few thousand less :-)

But at the moment I'm making do with changing my trusty Panasonic's menu settings or using 'Gimp^ to convert from colour to Monochrome.

One question that tends to nag me a little though, is whether monochrome is really suitable for summer holiday pictures. Blue skies, summer flowers, and colourful street scenes all desaturated into shades of gray. Well, I tried a bit of summer black and white recently and I'm sure I'll be experimenting more before the autumn comes.

During June 2013 I spent a few days holiday in Italy and actually chose to publish all my pictures of Venice in B&W (see Photo Gallery, Holiday 2013). This decision was not made lightly as Venice is, like most cities, quite a colourful place, but I'm quite pleased with the results.

At the time of writing the sun is shining and I'm pondering over the forthcoming blog project, something on the lines of last years 37Days I think. Whatever I decide to do, I'm sure it will have a considerable B&W content.

July 2013