[Leica] Re; Barcelona in color - not!

[images at comporium.net (Tina Manley)]

Well, I totally disagree.  I think there is a place and a reason for B&W
photography today.  I agree with Ted that when you photograph people in
color, you are photographing their clothes.  When you photograph them in
B&W, without the distraction of color, you see their faces and eyes - soul,
if you will.  Unless there is a specific reason for using color, I usually
prefer B&W.  I have versions of all of these photos in color, but it's the
B&W ones that move me:

http://tinamanley.smugmug.com/gallery/5885005_Vryn9#367425430_KikRj

<http://tinamanley.smugmug.com/gallery/5885005_Vryn9#367425430_KikRj>B&W is
coming back for use in advertising,  too.  It stands out among all of the
color snapshots that bombard us constantly.

Tina

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin at 
gmail.com>wrote:

> All I asked was why Lluis took so many B&W photos in colorful Barcelona.
> Rather than a simple answer to the question, the LUG was treated to a
> barrage of overpowering assumptions about the merits of B&W. I apologize if
> my polemic seems to be mostly directed at Dr. Ted but his response was the
> longest, had the most arguments, and was the best target. Sorry, Dr. Ted.
>
>
> It is amazing how many red herrings B&W advocates have managed to drag into
> the discussion of B&W vs. color in photography. Had most LUG colorphobes
> been consistent, the herrings would have been gray. As far as the picture
> viewing public is concerned, however, there is no contest. Color
> photography
> is the runaway winner. Even though film sales have plunged to one seventh
> of
> their volume of ten years ago, color film outsells B&W film by 20 to 1.
> Preference for B&W or color may be a judgment call but there are valid
> reasons why B&W was used in the past and color predominates today.
>
>
> For me, and most of the country's movie audience, the choice between color
> and B&W came with the release of "The Wizard of Oz" in 1939. I was taken to
> see the film as a birthday present on its local premier in a big Chicago
> movie theater. To this day I remember the collective gasp of the audience
> when Dorothy stepped out of her B&W Kansas home into the Technicolor land
> of
> Oz. In 1947, only 12 percent of Hollywood films were made in color. By
> 1954,
> that number rose to over 50 percent. Today over 90% of commercial films are
> made in color. Despite the objection of Hollywood purists to the colorizing
> of old B&W films, the public demands it.
>
>
> Now about the technology. Color photography has a history almost as long as
> B&W photography, dating back to James Clerk Maxwell's demonstration of
> three
> color photography in 1861. But until the advent of integral tripack color
> films in the 30s (Kodachrome), color photography was quite difficult. Back
> in the day I fooled around with the carbro and wash off relief processes.
> It
> took me a full day to make a single print. Compared to color, B&W
> processing
> was dead easy. But B&W photography largely vanished from the public domain
> with the advent of the digital camera. As far as I know no consumer B&W
> digital camera has been offered to the general public since the .09
> megapixel Logitech Fotoman of 1990. You can use your digital camera to make
> B&W photos but it seems a waste of two thirds of the camera's resources.
>
>
> I agree with Ted that content is the most important characteristic for news
> and documantary photographs. But I completely reject his assumption
> that disasters
> generally look worse in B&W simply because the content is usually violence
> and death. B&W provides a degree of abstraction that insulates the viewer
> from the emotionality of the event. The color of blood in B&W is black. The
> color of brain matter is gray. The real colors are far different. The two
> photos he cites from the Vietnam war, photo of the police officer shooting
> the VC through the head and the young girl running away from the Napalm
> with
> her clothes and body burnt would have been even more striking in color. As
> would Capa's photographs of the D Day landing. Contrary to Ted's view that
> "colour wouldn't have added anything," I feel that color would have added a
> great deal. Blood is red, Napalm burns bright orange. Neither is in B&W.
>
>
> So why weren't the pictures in color? First, printing color images in
> letterpress is a difficult and time consuming process. Even B&W printing is
> a challenge. Matthew Brady's pictures of the Civil War never appeared in
> newspapers because the halftone process wasn't available until 1881, a
> decade and a half after the war ended. My old paper, the Boston Globe, used
> a 65 dpi halftone screen until 1960. Leica image quality certainly wasn't
> necessary and color was out of the question. Run-of-press color was not
> common in general circulation newspapers until the mid 70s. Quite a long
> while after the dramatic pictures that Ted mentions were taken.
>
>
>
> Ted tries to support the dominance of B&W as preferable in news photography
> by saying "the 280,000 images in the National Archives of Canada
> collection?
> It's probably 75% B&W, 25% colour. Again simply because of the assignment
> and whether magazine assignments, travel or tourism or whether the client
> asked specifically to shoot in whatever medium." To put it bluntly,
> newspapers and news magazines did not demand color photos because of the
> merit of B&W but simply because it was less convenient and more costly to
> get color pictures printed when most of Ted's pictures were taken. That's
> not the case today.
>
>
> Second, very few news photographers, particularly those in combat zones,
> shot color in the field. I know this for a fact. As a Korean war vet
> attached to Conarc Board 2 (the Armored Center) and the First Cavalry, one
> of my military assignments was to photograph Army armored vehicles in
> combat. Color films were slow and difficult to get processed. The only way
> to get color film processed was to send it to Japan. All it took to develop
> B&W film was a TriChem pack, a suitable dark space, a film tank and a
> couple
> of liters of water. It was easy if you were not too busy dodging bullets. I
> am sure that much the same conditions held in Vietnam ten years later. I
> was
> there, I know.
>
>
> Finally, most psychologists hold that while meaning can be conveyed by a
> B&W
> image, the emotional affect is largely conveyed by color. Remember, blood
> is
> red, not black. Vomit is green, not gray, Flowers are not B&W but are a
> Crayola box of color. B&W is so seldom seen in commercial imaging today
> that
> it is attention getting by its rarity. Perhaps being different is the
> reason
> for success of the apocryphal portrait studio that Ted mentions. The image
> consuming public has spoken. B&W photography is a fossil technology largely
> supported by fossils such as inhabit the LUG. Remember, if color images
> offend you, you can always turn down the saturation on your computer screen
> or view them on your B&W TV.
>
>
> Just the facts.
>
>
> Larry Z
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>
>


-- 
Tina Manley, ASMP
www.tinamanley.com