Black and White Need Not Be Blah

This weekend my wife and I took a ride through Hunterdon County, stopping for lunch in Lambertville. Lambertville is one of those small pricey towns that are converting every available inch of retail space into an antique store. While many of the building are genuinely old, many more are being restored to look older – or so it seems. Unfortunately, goods and services reflect 2009 prices! But if you look hard enough there are genuine artifacts that show their age in a graceful way.

I’m one of those people who feel that the only way to capture that time capsule is in B&W. When you mention B&W to today’s youthful photographers the “B” words seem to come up – “blah” and “boring.” With a minimal amount of Photoshop magic, B&W and color can be combined to draw the viewer’s attention to that which the photographer wanted to capture.

Take a moment a really look!

Too often, a photo’s vivid color captures our attention and we neglect to realize and appreciate the true detail in a photo. In photo contests, I often wondered how many winning photos would have won if submitted as a monochrome (black & white) photo. Look back at some of the historic photos published in Time, Life and Look magazine (now I’m dating myself!) and you’ll see they were black and white. Black and white photos captured a moment in time, reinforcing the content and what the photographer was trying to capture.

Here’s a great example of how black and white shows the age and character of a portion of the Basilica in Newark, NJ. The building, standing 196 ft tall at its highest point, is largely made of hand carved stone. The horizontal gargoyles are actually 14ft in length. When you take a moment to really study the detail it’s hard to believe that this was all done by hand!

This photo was originally shot in color as 1 RAW photo using an early sample of the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1. I used the 14-140 lens from the DMC-GH1 to compose the view I was looking for from across the street.  I also used a polarizing filter to darken the cloudless October sky. Final processing was done in Photoshop using Nik Software’s Silver Efex

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Somewhere thereafter The Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey appeared. Though this historic site is situated in an area you might not want to be by yourself at night, it remains one of my favorite photo spots, especially in the dead of winter when everything turns to crystal ice. The bridge over the falls was also featured in an episode in the 1^st season of “The Sopranos”. I’m told, on the East coast of the U.S. it is 2^nd in size only to Niagara Falls. This was one of the lucky shots I never planned for, originally in color and converted to B&W to enhance the sky drama. Walking down to water level one has to watch not to stumble on an occasional used hypodermic syringe or spent crack bag – yes, I’m very serious!

B&W – Life in Monochrome

Just testing