Lovely As a Tree
April 7, 2014
Some trees just make you look at them. This was one such tree at the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park. It wasn’t the color that drew me to it but the shape, which I could appreciate even more by removing the color.
Romancing Reality 
Sometimes the color get in the way of a great shot. I think a lot of folks who have not shot black and white film extensively may not see this potential.
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April 7, 2014 at 10:00 AM
I think you’re right, Ken. I remember that when I did shoot (and develop and print!) black and white film, I was aware that a black and white image was an abstraction of what I saw with my eyes. Sometimes that abstraction is just what’s needed to appreciate a scene or object. What I don’t understand is why these days I usually don’t realize that I’m shooting for B&W when I press the shutter. I only realize it when I download and see that what turned me on isn’t working—the interest has disappeared. It’s only then that I say to myself, “Hm; maybe I’ll see what this looks like in B&W.” Then—often but not always—it’s “bingo.” Late in my “film career,” when setting up my bathroom darkroom presented too many problems, I turned to Kodachrome, and started responding more to color. Now if someone _else_ tells me to try one of my color shots as a B&W, I usually don’t like the transformation. I guess that when I make photographs nowadays, usually I am responding to color.
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April 7, 2014 at 10:36 AM
I think “seeing in black and white” comes from constant practice and it’s a talent that can be easily lost. The good news is that it’s very easy to make a conversion with digital and the process is very flexible. And there are some conversion plug-ins that are easy and inexpensive and do a fantastic job. That said, I do miss working in the darkroom. It was so peaceful.
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April 7, 2014 at 12:05 PM
I even liked the smell of the chemicals. It was part of the photography experience.
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April 7, 2014 at 12:28 PM
I know what you mean about shapes – so many of the oak trees around here have such beautifully gnarled forms. Once at the corner of Sawyer and Clark, stopped at a red light, I couldn’t help making a quick sketch of a tree that had several trunks branching in such interesting directions.
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April 7, 2014 at 11:09 AM
Thanks for your comment, Patricia. I do love the shapes of the oaks around here—even though the leaves don’t look like oak leaves to these eyes raised in the North.
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April 7, 2014 at 11:18 AM
Like you I started out life as a photographer as a B&W shooter and printer at home. B&W has the capacity to distil the essence of an image by removing the distraction of colour. I do believe that a B&W worker learns to see the world differently. That probably explains why it is so hard to work with B&W and colour simultaneously. I tried that for a while about thirty years ago – two cameras one loaded with Kodachrome, the other with FP4. It was extremely difficult to think in both media and I soon gave it up. Nowadays of course I always shoot in colour. In the mountains I find B&W creates a different mood, and for me, seems a truer representation of what I see. Elsewhere I greatly enjoy colour, but if I want drama I will switch to B&W – it’s so much more tolerant when you push the contrast, and blow the highlights and saturate the blacks.
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April 8, 2014 at 2:59 PM
Thanks for your addition to the conversation, Andy.
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April 8, 2014 at 7:39 PM