Who killed Black & White?

From the days of the Daguerreotype, calotype and even the tintype, a majority of the history of photography was captured in monochrome. The images were a black and white rendering of real life scenes and situations. Even when colour photography first came around, it made more sense to capture in black & white. Colour processing was very expensive, and the images were poor.

The quick expansion and improvements in colour photography made black and white processing a chore to find and develop. Less and less stores carry B&W film, less labs process in B&W, and colour was a breath of fresh air to a tired and worn out hobby.

Good news is ... black and white is back!

In a world where everything is saturated in colour and dominated by pixels, B&W gives off the illusion of "real", and to many ... it seems fresh (we love the retro stuff). The driving force behind this movement is that shooting in B&W allows the photographer to learn more about how highlights, shadows, lines, patterns, exposure all affect the final product. A lot of times, colour assists in hiding the imperfections of the final product e.g. a saturated photo can make a low contrast photo look acceptable. As a result, many photography students learn the basics of photography with B&W Ilford film and darkroom processing.

The image above was taken with my EOS 50D, but I decided I needed a different outlook to a tired and overblogged landscape. Initially it was a 5 photo HDR, but the post crop and monochrome afterwards made the difference.

NB: Need some new locations to shoot, let me know if you have any suggestions