I am in a blogging group at my company, Automattic. We are the company behind WordPress.com, and work to develop the most popular blogging software in the world, WordPress. Not every one at Automattic blogs, but many people do. The blogging group has a Slack channel where we share recent posts with one another and talk about blogging in general. Every Monday morning, a bot in the Slack channel asks each person several questions – “what did you post recently”, and a few rotating questions, like “what have you been thinking about”, or “is there something you believe, which you think most people disagree with”. Today, I came to talk about this topic.
I believe that the only reason that people still take black and white photographs is nostalgia. If when photography had first been invented, it was in color, no one would have ever thought to make a black and white photograph.
Lately I have been getting more interested in photography. My Canon 600D broke last Christmas when the flimsy tripod on which it was mounted fell over. I spent several months searching on Ebay for a replacement, and recently settled on a 760D, and have been enjoying practicing my techniques again. There are also a number of great photographers at Automattic, and I have started following many of their blogs as well. Some of them seem to really like black and white photography, which is why I started thinking more about this. I attended my brother-in-law’s wedding last weekend, and I brought my camera to many of the wedding weekend events like the dinner the night before the wedding. Several other hobby photographers noticed my gigantic camera and started talking shop with me, and I decided to make my bold, perhaps unpopular statement about black and white photography. The father of the bride mentioned a scenario in which you are taking an unposed portrait-style picture, and there happens to be a brightly colored object near the person. In a color photograph, that object might distract from the real subject, but a black and white picture allows you to focus the attention of the viewer on the subject better. I feel like that could also be done with a blurred background.
My conversation about photography with Steve was a pleasant surprise. Sometimes people are not really willing to discuss controversial topics without arguing, but we were able to have an engaging discourse without any anger. As we talked more, I started to contemplate the goals of photography as an art form. One possible goal of photography is to try to reproduce reality as accurately as possible. Another goal can be to capture reality in a way that we cannot do so with our normal human perception. For example, when using very fast shutter speeds to take a picture of a waterfall, you can capture the individual water droplets, which is not possible with the naked eye. We can know and understand that a waterfall must be made of individual droplets of water without having the ability to see them in a photograph, but capturing that view in a photo can also help us get a new perspective on reality. Taking a landscape picture with a large depth of field, so that both foreground and background are in sharp focus is also not really possible with human eyes, but can also create stunning effects. In my opinion, both of these effects – large depth of field and super fast focus are examples of pushing our natural eyesight beyond its natural boundaries, but simply as an extension. It is not a fundamental change in perception, just more of an augmentation. In contrast, I feel like removing the color from a photograph changes the perception along a completely different dimension. To me, a black and white photograph does not do a very adequate job of capturing a moment. It presents more of an alternate reality.
When color photography (and movies and television) became widespread, most people switched to color, because it was an obvious improvement. The limitations of the former technology had been lifted. For tv and movies, it seems like people never looked back. I haven’t done any research on this, but I would venture to say that the number of black and white tv and movies being made in 2022 is very close to zero. I watched several “artsy” movies on the plane ride back from the wedding, and they were all shot in color. But black and white photography still seems to hold a niche. I really feel that it is simply nostalgia. It is making a statement. It is saying, “look at me, I’m artsy”.
I have been watching a fair number of photography tutorials on Youtube recently, and one common recurring piece of advice there is to shoot in RAW. Usually the arguments for this are that you have much more freedom to correct color and such afterwards, than if you shoot in a compressed format like JPEG. That is certainly true, but I mostly feel that if you just use good settings on your camera and choose (or create) good lighting conditions to begin with, that you shouldn’t need to fix a lot of issues afterwards. I sometimes hear similar arguments about black and white photography. Let’s say that you didn’t like the way the colors turned out in a photograph. If you switch to black and white, that issue goes away. That is one way to look at it. I think the other way to look at it is simply that you didn’t capture the moment well, and you throw away that picture.
Time for a concrete example. This past weekend I took some pictures in a shady spot, and I decided to change my white balance settings from auto to shady. Then I forgot to change back to auto, and later that day I got a couple really orange pictures when I was in an outdoor, lighted tent. I realized my mistake after two pictures, and fixed the settings, but I really liked the pictures. So I decided to see if I could fix the color on the pictures. Below you can see the original, a black and white version, and a version with the white balance corrected automatically with the Mac Photos app. Which picture do you like best? I prefer the color corrected one.
It also occurred to me that the choice of color versus black and white pictures can depend upon the subject. One of my favorite things to photograph are sunsets and sunrises. What draws me to these is the color – the beautiful oranges, reds, and purples that result from the reflection, refraction, and diffraction of sunlight as it crosses a cloudy sky. I can’t imagine enjoying a sunset in black and white. Also, I enjoy the challenge of trying to capture these colors in a photo the same way that I see them with my own eyes. Keeping your camera on auto mode when trying to capture a sunrise almost always results in washed out, disappointing pictures.
I have another recent example too, again using the same grandpa and grandson. I caught a nice candid picture on the street of this grandpa and grandson. In my opinion, the black and white version loses a lot of the detail which I like. In particular, in the color version, you can see the various shades of grey and white in the grandpa’s hair, while in the black-and white, it looks like it is nearly all white. This could be due to the algorithm used. I just used the “auto” setting in MacOS Photos to make it black and white. Also, I feel like the color photo has a much happier feeling. To me, black-and-white makes everything seem more serious and a bit melancholy.
I have really been trying to practice the habit of THINK more. Why am I writing this post? In particular, it is helpful? I don’t think that starting disagreements is very helpful. Frequently I try to keep my controversial thoughts to myself for this reason; usually it is not very productive to share them. In this case, I am putting my idea out there both as a challenge to others and myself. I ask my readers to re-examine their opinion of black and white photography, and really question the value of it. In particular, do you think that anyone would be shooting black and white photos in 2022 if color technology existed from the start? If your answer is yes, let me know why. I am curious to learn more.