[Leica] Street photography in B&W?

[tmanley at gmail.com (Tina Manley)]

I would like to apologize for saying color was easy.  I should never post
anything after I've had two glasses of wine!  Color is not easy!!  Correct
color is very hard and Ric nails it every time.  I was thinking of the
point and shoot people with iPhones who only shoot in color and never
correct or convert anything.

I still like B&W, though! ;-)

Tina

On Sat, Nov 8, 2014 at 12:35 PM, Jayanand Govindaraj <jayanand at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Ric,
> I agree with you 100%.
>
> The point I was trying to make is that the frequently implied notion that
> B&W is "Art" and "The Real Thing", and that colour is an inferior medium,
> is, to my mind, completely irrelevant today. Most of the early masters shot
> B&W because that is all they had access to, not because it was a conscious
> artistic choice, and by the time widespread colour film of reasonable
> quality was available, they were too set in their ways to take full
> advantage of the new medium, not unlike the extreme reluctance of many
> photographers to switch from film to digital in the early days of digital.
> In other words, IMHO, there is a heavy dose of artistic propaganda and
> conditioning here in the repeatedly stated fact of the so called
> "supremacy" of B&W as an artistic medium. Starting with Ernst Haas and Saul
> Leiter in the 1950s and 1960s, there is enough of a body of excellent
> street photography in colour - one needs only to look at, say, Raghubir
> Singh's body of work on the streets of India, or Constantine Manos' recent
> book on the USA to understand what I mean. Similarly, I can see the soul of
> a subject just as easily in Steve McCurry's hypnotic colour portraits as in
> Jane Bown's equally hypnotic monochromatic ones.
>
> I do both, and I enjoy doing both, but colour is my basic medium, and B&W
> is an ancillary medium. By the way, colour is not easy - I spend more time
> post processing my colour photographs than I do my B&W ones.  When I cannot
> get the colour right, I convert to B&W - to me that is an easy option!
>
> This is not to belittle anybody, or any other opinion, but I have just
> stated what MY views are on this subject.
>
> Cheers
> Jayanand
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 8, 2014 at 10:22 AM, RicCarter <ric at cartersxrd.net> wrote:
>
> > I have finally reached this conclusion:
> >
> > There is no more bullshit photographic question than "Which is more
> > [insert whatever term you like here], black & white or color?"
> >
> > Very quickly, it descends into "Real photographers shoot black & white,"
> > which I have now come to regard as a personal insult.
> >
> > Each of us has our own preferences. None of them is founded in anything
> > other than opinion and personal taste.
> >
> > I'll do a little self examination to investigate if I do color because it
> > is "easy."
> >
> > Jay, who himself asked the original question, is an excellent street
> > shooter and uses mostly color. The world is full of excellent color
> street
> > photography. Is B&W the "fashion" of the field is a different question.
> >
> > You trying to stir up something, Jay? ;^)
> >
> > Sorry to be grumpy. I'll now try to go back to remaining quiet when color
> > or black & white questions arise here.
> >
> > Ric Carter
> > www.CartersXRd.net
> > http://www.facebook.com/ric.carter
> >
> > ?When you don?t shoot color, you don?t have to worry about color.? ? Jay
> > Hunter
> >
> >
> >
>
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>



-- 
Tina Manley
www.tinamanley.com
tina-manley.artistwebsites.com