Photography, especially black and white photography, is all about light and darkness, and balancing the two. Too much of either and the photo is at best dull, at worst incomprehensible.
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A photograph freezes time, just as a stopped clock may appear to do. The camera captures a single moment and preserves it, while life goes on. The person walking down the street continues to walk. The bird above your head continues to fly. The sun moves across the sky and the hands of the clocks still turn. But in your photo, all motion is paused.
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My surprise birthday trip to Florence, a city I’ve long wanted to visit, was naturally wonderful. In three days of rather mixed weather (one wet, one cloudy, one sunny) we managed to see many of its sights (but missed more than we saw), wandered its streets, ate gelati every day and excellent meals every evening, and slept well in a beautiful old house in the Borgo Santa Croce.
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Last week I paid a brief visit to Liverpool. I stayed only one night and saw only a fraction of what the city has to offer. The weather was dull and grey, best suited to monochrome photography.
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People have been using clay and similar materials to shape objects both ornamental and practical for millennia. Today every culture has its ceramics traditions: forms and styles, decorative techniques, purposes. These often sculptural forms lend themselves to monochrome processing.
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The theme at last night’s meeting of the Ealing group of London Independent Photographers was ‘Light and dark’. We each showed a series of images with our own interpretation of that theme. For my contribution I decided to edit some of my travel photos in high contrast black and white. The theme that tied them together as a series was the use of an arch to frame the scene.
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It’s a sombre thought that even the most modern and stable of structures may one day become a ruin. Did the builders of the Inca cities, of the Egyptian pyramids or of the temples of Angkor stop to consider that they may not stand for ever?
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It’s hard to say why a symmetrical image is so pleasing to the eye. It seems that our brains are naturally drawn to symmetry, finding it aesthetically pleasing and visually satisfying. Symmetry induces a sense of order, harmony, and perfection.
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Christiane Ritter spent a winter in the harshest conditions that Svalbard can offer. Living in a tiny hut with her husband and another trapper, but sometimes left alone there for many days. Constant darkness, cut off from the world by snow and ice; her Arctic was not my Arctic. But I think editing some of my photos in black and white has helped to emphasise what sense of bleakness I did find in this stunning environment.
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I don’t own a cat and never have; not because I don’t like them but because I like them too much to subject one to the trials of our frequent absences from home. So instead I enjoy meeting cats when out walking in my neighbourhood, or anywhere else come to that! And I don’t believe I can walk past a cat without stopping to say hello and take a photo.
