Photo Essay - Black & White Photos Matter 

Photo Essay - Black & White Photos Matter 

The last photo essay I posted consisted of mostly black & white photos, because of a technical colour failure in my camera on that occasion, but since the photos were taken in an ancient village, it did fit with the era of the subjects.  However, before I got my first digital camera, I used 35mm film cameras and mostly B&W films, which I processed myself in my darkroom, where I also enlarged and processed the prints.  My favourite camera was a Canon F1 SLR - I bought the first one sold in Toronto, about a half a century ago, and it was a great camera. With it I had Canon lenses from a 24mm wide angle to a 300mm telephoto, and lugging them around was a weighty job.  These days I use a digital Panasonic with a Leica zoom lens equivalent in 35mm camera terms from 24mm to 720mm (a 30X zoom), and the whole works fits into my pocket.

The photos below consist of ones taken from about half a century ago up to ones taken recently. The ones taken with my Canon F1 were B&W, a few then tinted for effect, and the ones taken with my digital cameras have been de-saturated, removing their colour.  I explain the reasons why.

1.   Although this is a recent photo, originally in colour, the clothing appears vintage, so I de-saturated the colour for a consistent look.

2.  I took this photo in the Chinese museum village of Yangmei.  I'm not sure if the woman is in tears or just didn't want her photo taken, but using B&W instead of colour is more consistent with a feeling of mourning.

3.   The sepia tint of a B&W photo taken in the Wales countryside about 46 years ago with my Canon F1 was processed in my darkroom.  The sepia tone adds to the warmth of the scene.

4.   When I was a young kid I would walk from my grandparents' store to Dundern Castle in Hamilton, Ontario (the city of my birth up to age 21) to sit on the hillside behind the castle (which was a museum) and watch the trains below.  When I grew up, and living in Toronto, I took my Canon F1 and went back to that spot to photograph those tracks and trains - a memory now recorded.

5.   This is one of my all-time favourite photos. taken more than 40 years ago looking down at the Ottawa River just behind Canada's Parliament buildings.  I enlarged the photo in my darkroom on a special silver photo paper, and while here in China scanned it onto my computer, which is what I did with many of the photos I brought with me. 

6.   Last Chinese New Year we toured a great park - I posted a photo essay about it.  The buildings were relatively dark and the heavy mist prevented any colour to be in the scene behind them, so it seemed logical in the circumstances to turn it into B&W, which again is fitting due to the vintage subject. 

7.   For the same reasons as with no. 6 above, it made sense to desaturate what little colour there was originally in this photo.  This boat sits in a large pond in Millenium Park, in the ancient Chinese Capital - Kaifeng.  The photo was taken about 10 years ago.  I will soon be posting at least one photo essay about Kaifeng.

8.   You would only know that this photo was taken within the last couple of years because of the clothing styles. 

9.   If you have been looking at my recent photo essays you will recognize that this photo was taken at the ancient village in Chongqing called Ciqikou.  The reason I de-saturated it is because at the top left of the photo the windows were a bright blue colour, which was a distraction from the rest of the scene which is originally in shades of gray.

10.   This photo was featured in my photo-tecnique essay on "framing".  Before my first marriage, I would spend the odd weekend up in the remote Ontario countryside in a farmhouse owned by a couple of friends in the music business. These barns sit behind the farmhouse.  The sepia tone was applied on processing the print, after I had enlarged it in my darkroom. 

11.  This is a photo of a gravestone in a cemetery in China. It needed no desaturation, because it was all B&W anyway. 

12.   This farm was in the same remote Ontario area, and for years I regretted that I did not buy it when I had the opportunity - it was before I was married.  It consisted of 300 acres which included a totally enclosed 35 acre spring-fed lake, 65 cleared acres and the rest was forest.  There was a very tight little bungalow with indoor plumblng (rare in that area) and a barn not in very good condition set way back from the gravel public road, and at the corner of the driveway and the road was an abandoned brick one-room schoolhouse that could easily have been renovated into a studio-home.  There was also a small fishing shack down by the lake. I could have bought the whole thing for $15,000 because the owners were elderly and wanted to move to the county town.  I no longer regret not buying it because of my life now, but for a long time I did.  However, it would have led me into a totally different life. 

13.   A loggers road in the same remote Ontario area.  B&W is very suitable for photos that show shadows cast across open areas. 

14.   Although there was little colour in this photo taken with a digital camera, complete de-saturation is effective for creating a spooky scene.