For the past one year, I’ve been exclusively photographing in black and white. This is something new to me as I’ve been working with color for a very long time. Let’s dive deeper into some things that I’ve learned along the way.
Why?
When I consider why I transitioned from photographing in color to exclusively in black and white, I consider my relationship to the medium itself and my process of making pictures. This transition has allowed me to reconsider everything from the ground up- from going out and photographing, to coming home, processing, and culling through the work. I believe that these things are critical to consider when it comes to the photographic process. Ultimately, the reason why I switched my process is because I found my past way of working way too slow and cumbersome for the amount of time that I spend shooting.
Speed is important for me
The reason why I have been photographing using high contrast black and white, small JPEG files built into my Ricoh GRIII is because it is a very fast workflow. This is important to me because now I no longer have to consider processing RAW files in Lightroom. Also, the weight of the file is significantly lighter now using small JPEGs. The small JPEG files are around 4MB which is a big deal to me because I photograph so much. I actually believe I might photograph more than anybody in the world currently. I desire to go out and make pictures in a quick way where what I see is what I get in the camera. I have no desire to sit around my computer and tinker around in softwares. By adopting this new workflow, I can import thousands of photos from the day at lightening speeds directly into the iPad Pro photos app.
Abstractions of reality
Nowadays I am much more interested in abstracting reality rather than my past documentary approach to photography where I was depicting reality for what it is. Now that I am photographing in black and white, I can make pictures that depict what life could be. I am allowing the camera to do the work. I simply observe life, place myself and the camera in a particular way, but what the camera sees is what I get. I am no longer interested in simply depicting reality. I want to make more artistic pictures moving forward as I have spent a decade of time photographing the same way using color. By photographing in black and white, I believe I can push what a photograph can potentially be through experimentation and viewing the world in a much more multi-faceted way.
Aesthetically beautiful
With my high contrast black and white settings cranked to the max, the Ricoh GRIII delivers me an aesthetically beautiful picture straight out of camera. I believe that there is more potential and possibilities with black and white. A lot of the times with color photography, I became dependent upon the golden hour, weather, lighting conditions, but with black and white any condition is suitable. The aesthetics are very sublime and beyond beauty when I crush the shadows to deep black and focus only on what is in the highlight areas.
Back to the basics
The reason I decided to start photography using black and white is because I was looking to reevaluate the way that I do things entirely from the ground up. I felt like I needed some sort of change in my process and using black and white has been the change that I’ve been looking for. Black and white photography allows me to strip away the color from the world and focus on the light and shadow. It is very rejuvenating and liberating because It feels like I can learn photography all over again. Also, I believe all photographers should be able to photograph in both color and black and white, so going forward it only makes sense for me to switch up the game I play and photograph this way.