Renae with my ancient Seagull camera.
Lately, for what might be good reason, many "experienced" photographers have rallied to the cause of damning generative A.I. all the while demanding its partial inclusion in their own post production applications. Seems they'd like just a tad of A.I. magic in their noise reduction, subject separation and content aware fill, but not so much that it might threaten the sovereignty of their own "hand-crafted" creativity. But the reality is that every move forward in technology is one more angle of "slide" on the slippery slope of change.
I've been playing around with making black and white files from modern, full color digital cameras. The lure of black and white images is strong with photographers of a certain age. And, in truth, the graphic nature of a good black and white image is alluring to nearly all lovers of photography. But the decision to completely repudiate and remove color from our tools strikes me as the height of craft folly. Sure, I get that you might love working in black and white and intend that for all your art work. In a way it makes sense. But intentionally hobbling a camera's abilities can be self defeating, especially when a color file, as a starting point, allows for the use of color channels to make a more convincing, final black and white image than one generated by a camera with a monochrome sensor. You are effectively tossing out a whole range of creative tools in order to embrace....dogma.
Many who do this think it's a way of making a stand against the forward creep of technology. That this engineering retardation of sensors will stand as a buffer of sorts against the introduction of ever newer technology which threatens long time practitioners by dint of requiring them to evolve their methodologies. Their approach to imaging. Their idea of work. I get that this can be scary. And there is a word for it. It's: Neophobic.
I've been trying out all manner of ways to get to "black and white." What I've found is that modern color cameras, matched up with current post processing tools, or even just great profile "recipes" in camera, can actually do as good or better of a job making black and white images as the cameras dedicated to just making black and white images.
I was out last week with the Fuji GFX camera and I had it set to make (very convincing) Tri-X style black and white Jpegs. The argument for having a dedicated B&W camera is that your eye and your brain, when used in conjunction with a black and white only camera, condition themselves to look only for subject matter that is considered to be appropriate for monochrome-only output. But the reality is that a lot of photography just works much, much better in color.
I would walk down the street looking for certain subjects or light contrasts, or graphics shapes and constructions and I could find them easily enough but for every cool black and white "friendly" subject I came upon I stumbled across dozens and dozens of images in which color was a significant driver of interest and overall photographic success in a subject. Should I just walk on by lots of potentially great images in order to satisfy an intellectual and arbitrary practice construction created and implemented mostly to harken back to the days in which color film was iffy and expensive, black and white cheaper and more friendly to DIY? But why? Now we can have our color cake and convert it to delicious black and white gateau as well. Double duty from one frame. Twice as delicious.
I toyed with the idea of buying a Leica M Monochrom camera all week long. One in particular was in and out of my shopping cart so often I'm assuming it developed vertigo. But in the end, after looking at my own photo catalogs, with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of images, I found that my interest in black and white is only occasional and in nearly all cases an image I wanted to see in black and white didn't suffer from having started life as a color one. Not in the least. So, in the end, I have largely decided (always subject to sudden change) that I'd rather have another identical M 240 so I can do another last century affectation and carry two cameras around at once. One with a 28mm lens attached and the other with a 35mm or 50mm lens attached. Both set to make raw files. Both highly capable of rendering files in very pleasing and convincing black and white. No brain change required.
I'm heading out now to go one more round with the Fuji MF set to "Tri-X". It's a fun exercise. The images look very good ---- when a subject is complicit. But, I'm not locked into the B&W cult. If I see a blood red font on a bright blue sign bookended by one beautiful woman with purple hair on one side and a second women, with lavender hair, on the other side I can pretty much guarantee you that I'll be making a color shot of the scene. Just makes sense. And keeps me from developing Neophobia; at least as it regards the relentless forward march of aesthetics.
On a different note: I hope everyone had a wonderful and conflict free Thanksgiving and maybe took a moment to think about all the things they are grateful for. I spent the day with extended family, down in San Antonio and I can't imagine how the day could have been more pleasant. Even the drive down was a rare exception from the usual Mad Max nature of the IH-35 freeway. I didn't over-indulge but.....there is one more piece of rum, chocolate pecan pie in the fridge. If no one has claimed it by now it's mine!!!
I have too much to be thankful for to get it all mapped out in one blog post. Life has been mostly (almost completely) spectacular for me. Now, if I can manage to gracefully retire from working I'll have nailed it. Life is too short not to enjoy every single day. Living in the moment is a skill. I'm not perfect at that yet but I keep practicing. Not looking forward or backwards but staring into the kind eyes of right now.
Made easier with an emotional support camera over one shoulder.
