May 2007
Note four: Black and white and digital technology.
In my previous notes on digital technology, the reader would have noticed my general optimism towards it. However, there is a problem with digital regarding which I am not so optimistic, as its resolution requires great maturity, knowledge, perspective, and decisiveness, qualities that the majority of photographers do not possess. This problem is the fate of black-and-white photography. I know that several photographers believe that the presence of color, over the past few years, has definitively dethroned black and white, not just from the foreground but from the art scene in general. They are the ones who never understood that a black-and-white photograph is not a photo from which color has been removed, but a comprehensive view of the world, equally but differently vibrant and dynamic as the colored one. Their shortsighted view reminds me of modern Hollywood's decision to digitally colorize black-and-white films. Digital technology may rely on shades of gray, but it always renders colors. A digital photographer inevitably sees a colored result and is tasked with converting it to black and white. Experts even say that this must be done during post-processing and not during capture to ensure the fullest presence of tones (e.g., the Russell Brown method). Thus, the camera captures colors. This usually pushes the photographer to remove colors from those photographs that did not work well in color. Their black-and-whites are usually their failed colors. I do not have a definitive answer to this problem. For now, the only advice (with much hesitation) that I can give is the following: The photographer should avoid using the screen for aiming or directly checking the photo. The viewfinder shields him from reality and transfers to his eye a more abstract world, where colors and tones are not as realistic. The photographer should decide in advance what to shoot (black-and-white or color), as he did with film. If shooting in color (meaning he sees in color), he does not need to convert the rejected ones to black-and-white. As he never did before, there is no reason to do it now. Apply this practice to any other art (with the necessary proportions) and you will see how irrational it is. If shooting in black-and-white (meaning he sees in black-and-white), let him immediately convert the photos to black-and-white on his computer and then evaluate them. If a photographer wants to give every shot all the external possibilities to turn out well (as a professional photographer might), he should logically try all variations in vertical and horizontal orientation, in color and black-and-white, underexposed and overexposed, with or without depth of field, with a wide-angle or telephoto lens, etc. However, art means vision, perspective, and—most importantly—choices. And the black-and-white choice is one of the defining and paramount ones.
Plato Rivellis