"Today, the victory of colour photography over
black and white is almost complete…..To work in black and white now is to make
a deliberate aesthetic statement or to reference the work from the past in a
particular way"1
Derrick
Price
I have a great
admiration for black and white photography; I love the way that monochrome can
transform an image and focus our attention as viewers on small details or
enable us to concentrate on form and tone. Yet, I rarely convert my images to
monochrome - approaching this assignment one of the first question I needed to
address was my reasons for this.
When I first became
interested in digital photography I used photoshop a great deal to manipulate
my images. The understanding I gained during this time has proved invaluable in
underpinning my knowledge of how the digital image is made up, however, I reached
a point when I realised photoshop and digital manipulation was getting in the
way of me actually taking photographs. I would spend hours at the screen trying
to make something of an image that did not warrant this - I realised my time
would be better spent trying to take better photographs and began to
concentrate on improving my photographic technique. I stopped using photoshop
for every image I took and began only to use it when I wanted to create a
specific effect. This also coincided with me becoming 'seriously' interested in
photography and a growing appreciation I began to have of art photography -
rather than reading 'how to' books and magazines I began to look at
photographers work and started to read books on art theory. From this point on
I only converted my images to black and white if that was my original intention
- I loathe to see alternative pictures shown in both colour and monochrome, to
me the photographer should have the conviction to do either one or the other
but not both.
To get myself
thinking about this assignment I brainstormed what black and photography could
mean. Words like real, truth and documentary were the first I thought of along
with the term 'fine art photography.' It is a phrase I loathe because of the
connotations that photography can only be fine art by conforming to some sort
of aesthetic standard. It suggests that the photographer must be serious about
their work because it is produced in black and white; I hate pigeon holing and
find the description quite insulting as it suggests that photography has to
have some sort of sign post that it is art before it can be taken seriously. As
my interest in photography grows I become less concerned with work that is
purely pictorial and am increasingly attracted to work that is more challenging
using unusual points of view or exposure settings. The work of
Daido Mariyama comes to mind as an example of this.
I always like to
have some sort of theme to underpin my assignments and I kept coming back to
the notion of photography and reality as a subject to explore. It seems ironic
that black and white images should be seen as more authentic than colour
despite the fact they are not a direct translation of the way we see the world.
Thinking of photography as truth I remembered two examples from my research
which challenge this. The first is an image by documentary photographer Stepan
Rudik,
Street Fighting Ukraine which
won third prize in the World Press Photo awards 2010 and was subsequently
disqualified after judges deemed the image did not conform to accepted
standards in the industry. (Original image
here.)
The final image is
completely different to the original, the close crop onto the boxers hand being
wrapped and gritty black and white treatment give a total different reading to
the original image. Interestingly, these were not the reasons given for disqualification
- a small area of background detail was cloned out of the image and that was
why Rudik had his prize taken away.
Another example of
pre digital manipulation of an image is by a photographer many see as a giant
in the history of documentary photography W. Eugene Smith. Smith was obsessed
with printing and would rework negatives throughout his career for different results.
He wrote,
"Negatives are the notebooks,
the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft
but never the completed version of the work….Negatives are private, as is my
bedroom…"2
In this article by photographer
Joerg Coldberg.
Two radically
different interpretations of the same image, Madness 1959 are shown (called
patient in a mental hospital, Haiti, 1959 by Michael Freeman in his book 'The
Photographer's vision.') In his blog Coldberg wonders whether this image would
have been disqualified by World Press Photo because the figures have been
removed from the background in the second image. I wonder whether controversy
over manipulating an image in post production either in the wet or digital
darkroom is more about elitism than anything else - is it because digital
images are seen as 'less' than analogue and photoshop is deemed a simple
process in comparison to the skill required by a master printer in the darkroom
that criticism abounds? It seems to me that photographers have always
manipulated there images to heighten meaning or even change the way an image
can be read completely. I do not see this changing any time soon and as long as
we remember that any image we view is a subjective rather than objective view
of the world I do not see a problem.
For the assignment I
decided to take a series of images within a mile radius of my house. My first
consideration for this was practical - I had a short space of time to complete
the assignment and needed to have a subject that was accessible. I was also driven
to explore the notions of photography and truth I have detailed above. I
deliberately decided to concentrate on the more run down and unloved aspects of
my locality and then to process the images in a way to heighten the subjects
grittiness as much as possible. Viewpoint was particularly important in that I
deliberately excluded details so the viewer does not have a clear understanding
of what they are looking at - I was not interested in showing truth only an
aspect of what can be seen in my local area. Where I live in the North-East of
England there are high levels of unemployment and poverty, some of this can be
clearly demonstrated near to my home but in my opinion is the exception rather
than the rule of what the area is like. By choosing to ignore positive
representations of the area the set of pictures gives a snapshot of the local area but not necessarily the
truth.
I researched
different ways of converting the images into black and white (of which they are
many) before deciding to only use Adobe Lightroom - I am familiar with the way
Lightroom operates and like the intuitive way images can be processed and the
way the software encourages experimentation. A lot of advice I read on
converting images to black and white advocated trying different treatments to
see how an image looks rather than a hard and fast rule or recipe for
conversion. This was something I took on board using only my eye as a gauge to
whether an image was working or not. My approach was to first convert to black
and white and then push contrast and clarity as much as I could to stretch the
tonal range as much as possible, with most
images I would also lower exposure to increase the gritty feel. I would
then tweak the tone curve and black and white colour mix selections before
adding a vignette and a small amount of grain. My overall aim was to create a
set of images that look like are similar in their treatment and sit together as
a group. The most success I had with this assignment however is how I managed
to stick to my self imposed deadline for completing shooting, and then work
with the images I had taken to produce the set. I had a much improved sense of
confidence in my selections and editing choices and was able to pair down my
first selects to my final 10 in a much shorter space of time than I usually do.
Maybe it was the pull of a very definite deadline for this assignment that
helped me or maybe it was my clear approach and increased confidence in my
workflow that stopped me slipping into procrastination - I guess only time will
tell!
Nikon
D700, 50mm f1.4 lens, ISO 200, 1/180 sec @ F4.8
Nikon
D700, 50mm f1.4 lens, ISO 200, 1/90 sec @ f9.5
Nikon
D700, 50mm f1.4 lens, ISO 200, 1/180 sec @ f8
Nikon
D700, 50mm f1.4 lens, ISO 3200, 1/90 sec @ f1.4
Nikon
D700, 50mm f1.4 lens, ISO 1600, 1/60 sec @ f3.3
Nikon
D700, 24-70mm f2.8 lens @ 24mm, ISO 1600, 1/250 sec@ f6.7
Nikon
D700, 24-70mm f2.8 lens @ 45mm, ISO 1600, 1/250 sec @ f8
Nikon
D700, 24-70mm lens @ 58mm, ISO 1600, 1/350sec @ f6.7
Fuji
X-E1, 18-55mm f2.8-4 lens @ 18mm, ISO 200, 1/140 sec @f9
Nikon
D700, 50mm f1.4 lens, ISO 200, 1/250 sec @ f5.6
1Photography: A Critical Introduction, Ed.
Liz Wells (2009 Routledge)p112
2The Photographer's Vision, Michael
Freeman, (2011 ILEX) p.176
