If a black and white photograph is a 'departure from reality' (and surely it is), then why are so many photographers still drawn to taking them? And what is their appeal for the viewer? Is it merely nostalgia as some have claimed? After all, the oldest among us grew up I'm a world of black and white films, TV and family snapshots.
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What we choose to leave out of a photograph matters as much as what we choose to include. And we are making such decisions every time we point our camera at a subject. But thanks to digital photography it is now very easy to make them retrospectively, when we come to edit our shots. Furthermore, we can take a single shot and test out a variety of options.
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The smallest things can trigger a memory: a song, a scent, a throwaway remark. Yesterday, for me, it was a single word, a place name: Monneville. Very many moons ago, in my teens, I spent about ten days living in Monneville as a pupil on my school’s French Exchange programme.
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I have been taking photos since I was ten years old, so for almost sixty years. As a child I photographed my family, mainly on family holidays. As I grew older I documented school trips abroad, my time at university, and of course holidays.
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Without the distraction of colours, the focus shifts more to the subject’s face and expression. The eyes in particular seem to stand out more, and consequently as a viewer you often feel more connected to the person. And the absence of colour results in an emphasis on shape and form, often making the people seem more significant than their surroundings.
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Perhaps because Britain is a relatively small island, many of us are drawn to the sea. After all, we nearly all live within a few hours drive of the coast. We grew up with seaside holidays, day trips to the beach. We are known as a ‘nation of seafarers’, based on those days when ‘Britannia ruled the waves’.
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Wherever we travel in the world we find cities building and rebuilding themselves. From Pyongyang in North Korea to Seattle on the west coast of the US and also back at home in London, there is no dearth of modern architecture to love or loathe.
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First, a disclaimer: in calling this gallery ‘colours that complement’ I don’t mean 'compliment'. They won't be telling you how great your latest blog post was or how good you look today! No, today we are looking at colour theory.
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T is the twentieth letter in the English language. It is, according to Wikipedia, the most commonly used consonant and the second-most commonly used letter in English-language texts. So it should be easy to find photographs of objects that begin with T, shouldn’t it?
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There is little I like more than the chance to see the world, or at least a tiny part of it, from a different perspective. And that often means getting high up to look down. Whether from a plane, a hot air balloon, a tall building or a mountain (preferably reached by cable car!), things always look different from above.
