Iceland One-Off - Color and Black & White
Color images are very different than black and white images. I’ve mentioned that before, but it’s true. Seeing them is different. Most successful images are really either one or the other. My considered opinion is that training to see in black and white can help your color image making, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Color alone generally does not translate well in black and white. Very few are successful in both. That’s what makes this image so unusual.
In scrolling through my images, deciding which to work on and which to ignore, I’d passed by this image on multiple occasions. It lacked a certain something. But that’s why you revisit images over and over again, because I always make an image for a reason and there are times it takes a while to figure out what that reason was and how to bring it out.
I finally realized that what had attracted me was the tonal qualities of the image and, given the harsh conditions and overall lack of color, the effect of the sky and the light on the vast landscape would be better served in black and white than in color. So I developed the image in black and white. I was pleased that one doesn’t have to struggle to appreciate the image.
But in the course of working on the image in black and white, it also dawned on me how to bring the color image to life (read: evoke the feeling I had that caused me to make the image in the first place). Some of the development techniques were the same, but others were not. And as I worked with the image, I came to appreciate it more and more as a color image as well.
Sometimes an image does work in both black and white and color.