Quoted By:
>Why do you shoot in black and white? What does this show that color can't? Do you ever shoot color?
I've shot a fair amount in color and like color photography a great deal, it's just that the materials have always been problematic for me. The green of the grass often seems off (like it's a strange chemical concoction) and the color of flesh can be a weird unconvincing orange, etc. If you carry your print from the processor you are shocked at how it changes as you pass by a window with daylight coming in or go under fluorescent lighting and then tungsten. I recognize I'm fussier than most, especially when it comes to my own work. The type C print is plastic, not very well washed, and if you live long enough, you'll see the colors shift. But matted, under glass, well lit, a Stephen Shore print from the 70s can look great and exciting - so I'm not really saying much of anything here. Digital ink prints on paper is the way to go I think but so often they have a nervous quality - each object in the print seems separate and distinct from every other object - some sort of relaxed harmony is lacking. But maybe others have already pointed this out and somebody somewhere is working on this technical fine point as we speak.
I think it's very hard to make truly legible color photographs of complicated scenes - like a busy street scene. Little things in the image that you don't care about so much, such as the red tail light of a parked car in the background, rise to claim undue attention - red is so aggressive - the tail light way in the back muscles its way to the forefront of the image. That's one reason so many color photographers tend to photograph in weaker, subdued light or de-saturate their images. Shadow areas, black hair and pants, etc. tend to be feeble in color prints - b/w tends to be more purely about light and structure, and as a technical object is vastly superior (it's silver on paper after all).
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