Why do you photograph in black and white?

[Marko]

How about Albrecht Dürer?

I could never decide if he was better at color or B&W, it always depended on the mood I was in...

[Photojeep]

As the original poster, I should have asked my question with better clarity.

I was wondering why you make black and white photographs. No matter how you got there...

I apologize for starting some on a discussion of the merits of straight bw capture versus color converted to bw. Such was NOT my intention.

Again, my apologies for poor wording.

(But I have enjoyed your responses though! Keep 'em coming.)

[Bruce Watson]

For those of you who choose to shoot black and white, I'm just curious why.

I use both B&W and color and so have thought fairly long and hard about this very question. I've concluded that the reason I use B&W materials for some scenes is that what I want to show in the final print needs it in some way. The most "normal" way that the image needs B&W is that the colors are distracting and get in the way of allowing one to focus on the underlying detail, textures, and rhythms of the scene.

[Vaughn]

Photojeep...

All discussions here tend to be free-for-alls and take many twists and turns. Personally, I like that. A direct question on what ASA to give to T-Max100 can lead to comparing the visual acutance of different developers with old Panatomic-X film.

So don't worry about framing your question tightly...it does not really matter. You started off a great discussion!

Vaughn

[katie cooke]

Why? Because I do. Because I love it.

I've been thinking about this back and forth since the question was posted, and had a four paragraph long ramble with lots of reasons and details, but, no, it all distills down to that. Try to define love, or really explain why you love someone: you could make a long list of reasons, but not one of them could ever convince another person to love that person in the way that you do, or even make sense of it.

[Joseph O'Neil]

As the original poster, I should have asked my question with better clarity.

I was wondering why you make black and white photographs. No matter how you got there...

-snip-

Because I'm colour blind.

[Brian Ellis]

Because is what I do better? I admire those who can do great color work like Masiel or Tenneson. For me doing good color work is far harder than doing good B&W.

I agree completely. I did no color until a couple years ago, then started doing more and more of it just to do something different after so many years of black and white. Man, talk about hard. The few good ones still just look like post cards, the many bad ones look like snapshots. That literalism (?) of color is just so hard to get past. And I absolutely can't see in b&w if I have color film in the camera or am using a digital camera. As soon as I'm equipped to shoot color all seeing in black and white goes out the window.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I agree completely. I did no color until a couple years ago, then started doing more and more of it just to do something different after so many years of black and white. Man, talk about hard. The few good ones still just look like post cards, the many bad ones look like snapshots. That literalism (?) of color is just so hard to get past. And I absolutely can't see in b&w if I have color film in the camera or am using a digital camera. As soon as I'm equipped to shoot color all seeing in black and white goes out the window.

Doesn't your dslr have a b&W setting? My little digigizmo has it so I can have it in b&w as well as sepia. Looks like crap, even in the wonderful 3 in lcd screen...LOL.

I think the adjustment to "seeing" in color is the hardest thing. I don't know about you, but I am too used to visualize the final print which I think it does not work in color. It is hard to "see" how the finish print will be in color. I don't know how Tenneson does it, since it seems she is using strobe lights, she must have spent a hell of a lot of money on polaroids.
When I go out I try to see what I could picture in color....not a damn thing so far, the reason I have not forked over some money to buy transparency film. I guess I am doomed to black and white..

[Brian Ellis]

Doesn't your dslr have a b&W setting? My little digigizmo has it so I can have it in b&w as well as sepia. Looks like crap, even in the wonderful 3 in lcd screen...LOL.

I think the adjustment to "seeing" in color is the hardest thing. I don't know about you, but I am too used to visualize the final print which I think it does not work in color. It is hard to "see" how the finish print will be in color. I don't know how Tenneson does it, since it seems she is using strobe lights, she must have spent a hell of a lot of money on polaroids.
When I go out I try to see what I could picture in color....not a damn thing so far, the reason I have not forked over some money to buy transparency film. I guess I am doomed to black and white..

It has a b&w setting but that can be changed with the push of a button. It seems to be the possibility of shooting in color that messes my mind up. When I carry only b&w film the possibility doesn't exist. I've mentioned this problem before and others have acknowledged the same problem so it isn't totally crazy (or maybe it is but I'm not the only crazy one).

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

It has a b&w setting but that can be changed with the push of a button. It seems to be the possibility of shooting in color that messes my mind up. When I carry only b&w film the possibility doesn't exist. I've mentioned this problem before and others have acknowledged the same problem so it isn't totally crazy (or maybe it is but I'm not the only crazy one).

That is a funny quirk. I guess in my case I am afraid of falling into the post card trap. Here we have plnety of small towns where people paint their houses in really bright colors, but how many pictures of a door with a bright pink wall can you take? It is the typical color shot that tourist come to take here, and of course the poor people.....another of my pet peeves.