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Photography is one method to view the world around you and draw yourself into a more intimate relationship with it or use your camera to separate yourself as an objective and sometimes detached witness. Through photography you can develop deeper levels of awareness in examination of the events that transpire before your eyes. If you pursue any art with passion, the more knowledgeable, skillful, and confident with that process you become, it will develop as an extension of self. What you create from that is an art form capable of expressing views, feelings and ideas for which there is no need for words.

My relationship with photography has been one of three things, taking photos to use myself, looking at photos taken by others, or working with photos taken by others as part of a larger project. I’ve worked with photographers in both an “fine art” way (displayed at Galleries) and a “professional” way (hiring them to shoot something new or buying their existing works to be a part of some design). I’ve looked at photos in magazines, in museums, and pretty much everywhere in between. The photos that I’ve always been drawn to are the ones that don’t so much tell a story, but that inspire, wonder and make you think about what the story might be. The photos I generally ignore, or look at for some specific thing and then forget are the ones that just document things. Portraiture usually falls into the prior category.

When shooting photos myself I’ve had a bit of a roller coaster ride which I’m still kind of on and that has inspired a lot of this analysis. So in my very early experiences with photography, I had some kind of lower-end 35mm camera in high school that I’d occasionally shoot photos of my friends with. Those photos no longer exist, the prints having been cut up to make collages and the negatives lost long ago.

I think that plays into photography a lot, for me especially. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time talking to photographers about their methods and their philosophy. There are two schools of photographers I’ve found, one that says good photography is all about editing. These folks recommend taking thousands of shots and then pulling out the handful of good ones to show off. Not surprisingly digital is huge with this world because shooting thousands of photos on film is not quite as easy. This is a practice that works very well for some people and there is no question that some photographers have gotten some really great results using this method of shooting including myself. I’ve definitely carried around a digital camera and snapped shots until all the memory cards I had were full and at the end of the day I was delighted to see that I’d gotten one or two stand out images.

As I said I don’t know where this is heading just yet, but I think the process of limiting myself forces me to be creative within that area. I think I do better with less options. I know not everyone feels that way, but I think the restrictions can be liberating, where as lack of restrictions sometimes is just too intimidating. Self inflicted restrictions anyway. And really, if nothing else, I’m really enjoying the creative outlet. It’s easy to forget how important that is sometimes, so having an excuse to embrace it makes my brain work in ways that I like, and don’t get to indulge in often enough. I have always been interested in photography and regularly take photos to use for various websites or projects I’m working on. Below is a selection of galleries which I often update with the best photos.

Thinking in B&W to Improve My Photography

I've long suspected that my move from film to digital has come at a price.  Very simply, digital photography, with its full color in-camera previews makes it easy to get in the habit of ''point, shoot, check the histogram then re-shoot if necessary."  This method has created a lazy approach to the fundamental components of photography. Back in my film days, 90% of my photographs were shot in b&w.  Over time, I came to think in b&w.  Only now do I realize what a powerful mindset that was.  When you remove the color information, your mind changes.  Think about how your pre-visualization works when you know that the color you are seeing will not be part of the final image.  You immediately begin to focus on things like texture, contrast, tonal range, shape, and form.  All of the subtle things can turn a good image into a great image.  Heck, I used to actually use the "zone system" to place the shadows or highlights right where I wanted them.  Just thinking about the zone system before pressing the shutter is an exercise in good photography.  It causes you to consider the elements in the photographs as elements and how they should work as part of the whole. 

Digital photography's convenience and free do-overs has made me lazy.  "I can always fix it later in Photoshop," I would think.   Well, as any good photographer will tell you...getting it right in camera is the beginning of a great image. An additional benefit of removing color information from a photograph is that it allows the image to be viewed in a new way...one that emphasizes things that can get lost or muted otherwise.  An example is above.

The color image was created five years ago; the b&w version was created yesterday after I came across the image while backing up files. The potential of this image escaped me when I first processed the color version five years ago.  Look at how the contrast, tonal range, and texture really show up in the b&w version.  I finally saw the power of these elements by converting the image to b&w.   

Its time for me to get back to thinking in black and white.