so what is it about black and white photos?
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textbooks have been written on the subject, by men much smarter and more learned than myself…
what ***I*** find intriguing about b+w is the reduction of information, the stripping away of color leaves only black, white, and gray shades to describe the scene.
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not all scenes lend themselves to b+w… busy scenes can become too cluttered when rendered to monochrome, details lost in the confusion.
i find that i generally process my black and whites with a LOT more contrast. strong forms pop off the page. blocks of pure white and pure black dominate your eye, push it from place to place.
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for me it is exactly that reduction of form, the constraint of un-colorness, which makes the art alive… like the rigid structure of a sonnet simultaneously shackles and sets free the poet, the black and white palate does so for the photographer. learning to ignore the color around you forces you to think about the simpler–but no less difficult to master–aspects of composition.
