Fall Foliage in B&W

[John Cook]

As the Autumnal Equinox is now upon us and the New England fall foliage season draws nigh, it is time, as they say on the Weather Channel, to "stand by to take and go ahead" to make some photographs. Perhaps a modest technical discussion might be in order.

Speaking personally, at my age I no longer generate sufficient testosterone to develop and print my own analog color. And I’m either too wise or senile (take your pick) to slide down the slippery slope into digital capture.

So this year I decree that my foliage documentation shall be in glorious monochrome!

Having spent my life imprisoned in the product studio pumping out logistically-correct wholesale plumbing sundries catalogues and the like, my experience with pretty pictures is limited.

At first blush, my plan is to shoot through a separation filter, such as a #29 red, to blacken the sky and whiten the crimson maple leaves, similar to IR film.

Then make a fairly soft print with few blacks and get out the Marshall’s Oils for a light tint.

I find that using Marshall’s whilst sipping some fresh unpasteurized apple cider from my local orchard and wearing my plaid cotton flannel shirt with corduroy slacks helps to set the mood.

How would you do it?

[John_4185]

John Cook, you are so very funny. If you ever make a post in which you don't focus upon being an Olde Pharte, I'll be surprised. To answer your question, simply stay in your recliner and find an energetic sixty-something year-old to make the pictures under your direction by cellphone.

[Mike Butler]

Sounds like good plan to me John.

Goes to show that the LL Bean catalog is every bit as important to the photographer as the Calumet catalog.

[Struan Gray]

I'm with jj. Why switch from one form of placid complacency to another? Try something new and alarm your cardiac nurse with an all-time record.

Autumn is my favourite season, because it is the season of revealed structure. Try looking at stems and twigs rather than leaves.

Failing that, a stumbling buffer with the gift of the gab would be ideally placed to do subversive anthropology on the leaf peepers and the industry that serves them. Get in their face - "I'm ninety four you know!" - and reveal their souls.

[Bill_1856]

I'd shoot it in color with my 8 MP Digicam, rework it in Photoshop (converting to B&W if appropiate), and print it with my HP 7960. But then I'm only 70 -- wise enough and not yet too senile to avoid the hair-shirt Ilfochrome and Dye Transfer printing that I've spent 50 years practicing, by learning t0 use the latest technology.

[Ralph Barker]

I think the approach you use should relate to whether it's an Irish or a Scottish plaid shirt, John. ;-)

From the purist perspective, what you're describing (it seems to me) is an approach that is inconsistent with the nature and allure of the subject matter. That might be prompted by a desire to rebel against your years spent as a thoughtful and disciplined commercial shooter, but I wonder if you'll actually be pleased with the result.

There's really no need to process your own color. Let a good lab do the grunt work for you. But, if you're set on shooting vibrant color in B&W, I'd suggest putting your commercial experience to use here and use various colored B&W filters to accentuate the difference in tones.

[Bruce Barlow]

Fall suits my melancholic outlook. Living in New England, and owning no color film, I find that the look of ferns and such against stone walls - the plants are browning, wilting, dying back - captures the mood. Others can go find the color. It is abundant. But it's the smaller, more intimate displays of the world bedding down for the winter that touch me.

[Terence McDonagh]

Perhaps I.R. film to show off the live from the dead. I guess the dying would show up somewhere in between. I love the idea of B&W leaf-peeping (as it's known in New England). It's usually my one attempt at color film every year. The leaf-clogged streams have been my B&W effort during the peak peeper season.

[John Kasaian]

Why not B&W? Go for a drive in the color of autumn, take some B&Ws if it suits your fancy. Make print and if someone remarks "The fall colors must have been beautiful" you can smile and reply "Yes, they were---you should have been there."

Thats what I do!

Cheers!

[Ben Calwell]

John,

I'm with you on everything, including the corduroy slacks and cider, but please don't "colorize" your prints. That would be akin to what, I think it was Turner Broadcasting's experiment a few years back, where they colorized classic black and white films. What a horror.

[George Losse]

I shoot the Fall colors every year in B&W. What's the big deal?
I also shoot the beautiful greens of Spring and Summer in B&W, what's the difference?

Besides I like the looks I get when I say, "I'm ready to go shoot the Fall foliage. All my holders are loaded up with B&W film."

[paulr]

I'm with Struan on this one. when i lived in new england, i enjoyed the fall colors with my eyes, but the camera came out when the leaves finally dropped. the shapes and the veiling and the darkness and the transluscence of the bare branches were always too alluring to ignore. i left the bombastic colors of early fall to the calendar photographers.

anyway, i hope your cardiac nurse is a cutie, and that she knows to give you a good spanking when you grumble too loudly.

[Oren Grad]

Every year, any foliage pictures that I take are in B&W, just like any pictures I take of anything else. No filters, no fancy tricks, just lens and film. That's what I like, so that's what I do.

As for photographing foliage in color: been there, done that, had quite enough of it, thank you very much.

[John Cook]

You all are probably right about the colorizing, in spite of what Lucile Robertson Marshall taught. I am not so nauseated by hand-tinted photographs as by digitally-colored movies, however.

In fact, I rather like my highschool graduation handout portraits, shot on 5x7, contact-printed, sepia-toned and oil-tinted by a team of dozens of women on the studio’s second floor. Boy, those were the days when commercial photographers really knew their craft!

My wife just had a passport Polaroid shot by a barefoot teenage girl with a handheld plastic camera under ceiling fluorescents at the local 60-minute photo shop. They were recommended by my wife’s employer as the place in town whose out-of-focus shots were least rejected by the government. Neat! I volunteered to do the portrait. But can you believe they no longer accept black & white photography? What is this world coming to!

I guess my weakness for tinted landscapes goes back to the framed Wallace Nutting photograph which hung in the upstairs hall outside my childhood bedroom. Wish I still had it.

Do a web search for his work. A very interesting life and career.

But you are also right about how nice the winter sunlight is without all those nasty leaves in the way. Nothing quite a pleasant as the shadow of bare branches cast across an old granite building.

Perhaps I should instead just keep quietly sipping the cider in my La-Z-Boy and wait for the first snowfall...

[Brian C. Miller]

Go for the trees that are somewhat changed. I.e., the ones that will have the most change when you put a filter over the lens, no matter what color. If a tree has green and yellow, then use a yellow filter to move them over to white, or a green filter to move the green over to white. Try to put as many shades in the leaves as you can.

[Donald Qualls]

For my region (North Carolina) I'd probably be better off with an orange filter than a red for foliage on B&W -- not many maples here, and the oaks don't really get bright red, more orange to umber, while the hickory seems to prefer a brilliant yellow (but a yellow filter won't darken still-green evergreen foliage much).

Unfortunately, I have only a single red filter to hand-hold in front of my plate camera lens (it screws into my Super Takumar 50 mm f/1.4, but that lens won't come close to covering 9x12 cm, even if I could mount it on my 250/7 Ideal). So, red filter it will be -- should still lighten the turned foliage and darken the green, just not as effectively as the orange would.

Marshall's oils -- nice thought, but if I manage to do any hand coloring it'll be with dime-store Prang water colors with a trace of ammonia added to soften the gelatin.

[Warren Weckesser]

An autumn shot by Ansel (http://www.anseladams.com/Merced-River-Cliffs-Autumn-by-ANSEL-ADAMS-P17C333.aspx)

[Bruce Watson]

I learned a long time ago to see in B&W, to see the tonal relationships that color hides. I don't know when and I don't know how, but I did learn how to see in B&W, and that's my normal mode in photography still. There's no question in my mind that you can indeed shoot autumn color with B&W film. And from my experience, you don't really need filters - let the spectral response of the film do its thing. At the very least, shoot with and without that red filter. I think you'll be surprised by the results.

For years, what I've tried to do is capture the structure, pattern, and rhythm of a scene. Color quite frankly can be a distraction, even a hindrance in doing this.

Lately, however, I've found some scenes where what I wanted was to capture the essence of the scene, which is similar, but a bit different. In particular, some scenes heavily identify with color. For example, it's difficult to capture the essence of a Sequoia tree without capturing it's signature red/orange color. Color is part of what the tree is about. So I've found myself shooting color again, on occasion. It's been over 20 years, and never with 5x4. It's been interesting trying to learn to see in color relationships again. I'm finding that like most things, it's not as easy as it looks.

This year, I'm going to the mountains to shoot the fall color. I'm taking a lot of B&W, but I'm also taking some color film. Because sometimes, the scene is just about the color.

Isn't it interesting John? We're old dogs, learning new tricks ;-)

[Struan Gray]

Actually, not all leaves on rocks (http://images.google.com/images?q=goldsworthy&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images) pictures are bad. Just most of 'em.

[Robert A. Zeichner]

Actually, fall foliage in B&W can be quite nice, especially when you photograph mixed woods where there are some trees dark and others light. I've done this in New England a couple of times. As far as coloring prints, I'd be inclined to check out some Marshall's pencils as there will no doubt be many small details that might be tedious with a brush. Just another idea.

[Paul Kierstead]

I have always found fall to be a sad time as I watch the plants go about feigning death in a desperate attempt to survive the oncoming winter. The changed leaf is a dead leaf. It is ideally suited to B&W, especially later in the fall as some of the leaves remain, wilted, on the branch.

[Jay M. Packer]

My favorite monochrome fall foliage photograph is from northern New Mexico, by Craig Varjabedian; see

http://65.108.171.253/sw/sw6.shtml

The autumnal equinox never looked so good.

-- J. Packer

[Larry Kalajainen]

John,

I'll probably be joining you loading my 4x5 holders with Delta 400 and my Rollei SL66 backs with ACROS, though I might just have one back loaded with Velvia. (I occasionally play around with Photoshop in order to learn it, though I'm not about to go out and invest in the equipment I'd need to do it right.) Having put in my time on Ilfochromes, I'm still happier seeing the world in monochrome.

I might, however, exchange your fresh cider (delicious though it is) for the slightly more refined apple product I grew to love while living in France-- Calvados. It calls for sniffing and sipping rather than guzzling, and it fills the room with the aroma of green apples.

I might also add a yellow filter to the red one, in order to deal with trees with yellow rather than red foliage.

Santé!
Larry