Painted Hills Detail

I’m back to working with just one image again.  Well, almost.  While it’s the same image, I can’t just leave it at one.  Join us and find out why.

I guess the whole reason for us to go back and work on images during this time of pandemic is to learn from the process.  Ok, and to get to the images I never really got to because of the move to Portugal, but that’s besides the point.  I’m here, I haven’t really photographed in ages, so this is an opportunity for me to get back to working with images.  To remind myself of the things I’ve not thought much about over the past months, and to explore image making to better understand it so that I’m ready the next time we’re really allowed to get out.  

This time, we’re back at the Painted Hills, proof again that a point and shoot camera can do wonders. (So “Why?” I ask myself, “am I so drooling over medium format cameras?”).  And, once again, I’m looking at an image done both in black and white and in color.  Though this time it literally is the exact same image.  

It gets to the questions I’ve long struggled with of what makes a compelling black and white image and what makes a compelling color image?  I guess the lesson from these images are two fold.

First, it isn’t really one or the other.  Yes, some images are strong black and white images and are pretty poor color images.  And vice versa.

But some images can be appealing either way if developed well.  

And that was my second lesson from this image session.  I was taken aback at how differently I developed the two images even though it’s not what one would call a complex image. 

I used a wide range of “tools” with the two images, but I did not necessarily use all of those tools on either image.  Some were used for one and not the other.  And sometimes the same tools were used differently on one image compared to the other.  To me, it was realizing that point - that I was developing the two images differently - that made me realize that the differences were due to the color v. b&w nature of the images.

I’ve often said that the hardest thing in the darkroom is the decision-making.  That takes judgment, experience, luck and experimentation.  And if you get off-track, things can come out horribly awry in the end.  Sometimes you just can’t find your way back.  

So perhaps from that came a third lesson.  Let the image tell you what it needs, regardless of whether it’s black and white or color.  Be sensitive to what it’s telling you it needs, and to how it’s responding to your decisions.  And listen to the image when it says it’s time to stop.

Well, no grand answers to the black and white vs. color image question, but lessons to be learned nevertheless.  I guess can’t complain about that following a developing session.  Plus a couple of decent images to boot!  Now, I wonder what the black and white image would look like if I really exaggerated things?