When I was young I remember looking at old family pictures with my mother. The photo albums were tattered, and the pictures fading, and I still remember asking her, "Why is everything in black and white?" She told me, "Everything used to be black and white back then..." Now with the simplicity of being a child and the fleeceability of believing in everything a mother tells her child, I took this to mean, everything. I often wondered what changed and how it happened that the world came to be in it's full state of color that I now know it to be. I wondered if it had happened gradually, or if it happened one night while the world slept. It wasn't until I was a young boy did I realize my mother had meant, the pictures were once all in black and white. The trees had always been green, and the sky had always been filled with blue. But that fantasy which I thought was reality back then comes alive everytime I look at black and whites, through the pictures everything is black and white.
Black and white photography has always held an interest with me. From the story above, to the year I took my first photography class in junior high school and developed the pictures, to the time that I discovered Ansel Adams and his brilliance. I like the simplicity of shooting with it. To me most images look better when shot in the monochromatic medium. When you take away the color, you put emphasis on the composition and lighting. Color has it's place, but there is something about the simplicity of looking at life in shades of gray. And after all "Everything used to be black and white." |
