I’ve always loved monochrome photography. From the time I was at university developing and printing my own films in the cavernous dark rooms under the building up to now with digital cameras and processing.
Of course, I have always done some colour images. In the eighties, it was transparencies with Fujichrome, but even then I also used Dia Direct, which was Agfa’s 25 asa monochrome transparency film.
But, and I know this is going to sound strange, I just don’t get on with my colour images. This is not about colour images per se, I love other peoples colour photographs, and perhaps that is part of the problem. I just don’t seem to be able to get the type of finished image I want when I’m using colour. With monochrome it is different. I know from the time I take the image to when I finish processing it, how I want it to look at the end and how to get that look.
I seem to have no problem seeing a colour image in my viewfinder, and being able to see that as monochrome. A strange thing, a month or two ago, I tried an experiment where I changed the view in the camera to monochrome. When I looked through the viewfinder or screen it was black and white. I hated it! I hadn’t got a clue what I was looking at in terms of the image and how it would fit my vision for the scene. I switched back to colour showing in the viewfinder and on the screen, and bingo, all was well again.
So, I have decided, or rather a couple of months ago decided, to process my images only as monochrome. I’ll do this for say a year and then review the situation.
I know some of you will say that certain images call for colour, and you are right, but I’m sticking to mono. For the time being anyway.
sensored-view.com 