The Death of black and white I tried to look at a Ansel Adams book today, all black and white of Yosemite. etv. but B & w has lost its appeal, considering what you can even do with an app on a cell phone. I am keeping my old black and white pictures for ref. but have been seduced by color. The only b& w I still like is film noir movies made in the '40s and early '50s, for their ominious use of shadows and lighting (Touch of Evil, etc.). I have even seen people in their 20s who won't watch a b & w movie so it's a;; in the past now...
You don't get the depth or sharpness of B&W with anything other than B&W film. Taking a color digital image and removing the color from it is not the same. Ansel Adams spent hours laboring over his images, first when he took them, and later when he (and later his son) processed and printed them. He kept voluminous notes on how th recreate his prints. Ansel Adams is why b&w is still the kind of image I prefer, although certainly digital has made color photography easy. Digital has also made photographers lazy. you can literally shoot hundreds of images, thousands, for the cost of a digital memory card, then edit the snot out of them in photoshop, producing almost any image you'd like. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
LOL I totally agree with you......the LOL is for the images showing on my 27" RGB monitor: crap. Nothing quite like looking at a professionally done paper print from a good film neg. Related to this; a good friend, the niece of Imogene Cunningham, has acquired EC's complete library of negatives, and is painstakingly cataloging them. Her spouse has sold his very well equipped sculptural art foundry, and is learning how to print B&W negs now.
