Paul Strand
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| Ben & Tee Tee. Dwellings and Our Street In background Take a stroll |
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I was reading an old post by Mike Johnston about colour. He was saying that if you shoot for colour, meanings arbitrary and if you shoot for meaning colour is arbitrary. I recon he's right... content tops everything else. It's not a b&w v colour issue, it's a reason for shooting issue.
If you're going to use colour use it well. It's not easy, on its own its never enough to keep my interest. Same for B&W, a bad shot taken in black and white cannot be saved by it having great tone.
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| Great colour... poor portrait |
There's no extra meaning added by having the shot in black and white. It just strips away something I had no interest in, the colour. It still works in colour but it has nothing to do with colour. What's of no interest to me shouldn't be in the photograph, it's as simple as that at (at least for me)
Fine shot - looks 1960's!
ReplyDeleteAh yeah... Walk the dog...Buy a Wonker bar
ReplyDeleteColour is vulgar, so says Walker Evans. He picked up a Polaroid before he died and shot a lot of "colour" - History of photography.
ReplyDeleteI'm black and white, no doubt about it. I have massive difficulties with colour in my shots, I've set the preview to B&W just to get rid of any sign of colour. Colour for me is shooting blurry flowers in the garden, that's about it.
Kras
I can't say I'm one or the other, I just try to be mindful of why I've picked up the camera. Colour plays a large part in Alec Soth's photography and that's largely an aesthetic choice, the psychological aspect comes from the content.
ReplyDeleteSaul Leiters book, Early Colur is beautiful. The work has nothing to do with the human condition, it's simply about colour and form, I say simply but it's a masterful use of the two. Painters (as Leiter was) get to create their own world using colour, to find it out in the chaos of the real world is something else.