BLACK and WHITE MAKES
Black and white photography, really good black and white photography, involves much more than the black and white extremes of the gray scale. The Zone System developed by Ansel Adams is a method whereby photographers can previsualize an image using eight gradations of the grayscale, then expose in the camera and develop later to achieve that vision. When I began to study photography in earnest, I learned composition, design and how to read light, and then how to employ the zone system to make a photograph. I believe Ansel was absolutely correct saying, "You don't take photographs, you make them."
I spent a year studying with Leland Rice in weekly extension classes at UCLA with countless hours of darkroom work learning to make good photos using the Zone System. It is not easy, especially with 35mm film loaded in short reels, shooting multiple subjects every week and developing negatives and prints until you get something good enough to post in class for everyone to critique. Aside from the basic fundamentals of photography, I learned a lot about my own abilities to create photographs. I recognized that my struggle to previsualize images in terms of the grayscale is because light and color are what I see photographically. Today, I rarely make any black and white photos, even though my digital cameras offer that option. It just isn’t my niche.
During the pandemic, though, in looking for new ways to present my work. I began converting some of my color images to black and white using the tools in Photoshop to try to approximate artistic Zone System prints. This is not an easy exercise, even with the algorithms and filters in Photoshop. It is a fun challenge though, and compels me to look at my work differently. Here are some examples of this project...