Of Black and White

Mar 1 • in.sight • 168 Views • No Comments

Colours, vibrant and full of life and convey countless emotions. But when the colours fail, is when the helpless photographer resorts to the first forms of photography – in monochrome, in black and white.

Photographs in black and white, at times, convey much more emotions than those in colour. For that, the photographer has to pre-visualise his/her frame.

The absence of colours makes the use of space in the frame more important and more compelling to the viewer. One also needs to decide on what to capture, its tonality and contrast, its composition and placement. By stripping colours from the scene, an element of ambiguity is added to the photograph. Shooting in monochrome does not mean that you lose colours. Black and white photography is a choice to limit the colours to just black, white and shades of grey. It is this very limitation that will help one become more creative because it does away with the distraction and the clutter of colours and lets one focus his/her energies into creating something thought-provoking. The magic of black and white is that it lends itself beautifully to imagination and experimentation.

All one needs to do before shooting, is to think.

Photographers you should check out:

1)      Prabuddha Dasgupta (in specific, a series of his called  ‘Longing’)

2)      Kurt Weston (he is visually impaired and considers this shortcoming to be his strength)

 

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