BLACK & WHITE NIRVANA

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About BLACK & WHITE NIRVANA

Black and White Nirvana is a new and fresh gallery on Flickr.

Black and White Nirvana is aimed at Flickr members who want to review, appreciate, learn and share from other Black & White photographs and artists.

1. No pornographic, or extremely violent images allowed
2. No Color Images (this includes sepia, blue, monochrome, and selective color)
3. No re-posting
4. Please only post images that you have taken yourself.
5. No racist oriented photography
6. No religiously offensive photography.

Any violation of these rules will cause the immediate deletion of your photo from this group.

You may post six (6) Black and White images to the group per day.

Thank you so much and enjoy!

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History of Black and White Photography

Before there was color photography, there was black-and-white photography. Before national magazines were published with nothing but color photos, they used to run a color photo on the cover and a few color photos sprinkled through the rest of the magazine. Everything else was black-and-white.

Let's go way back: The shiny-and-dark image of the Dauguerreotype was essentially, a black-and-white image. So too, the brown-and-white albumen print, the muted tones of the calotype and even the murky image of tintypes. Most of the history of the first hundred plus years of photography was etched in monochromatic tones– a photograph was a two-dimensional rendering of light and dark patches that created a black-and-white likeness of a real-world scene. Sometimes the dark portions were dark gray and black, other times dark brown and deep brown (sepia).

Even in the past fifty years, there have been lots of reasons to use black-and-white film. Early color film, processing and printing was expensive– much more expensive than black-and-white. Worse still, the quality of the images was often poor, particularly from low-cost labs used by amateurs. This was because the film wasn't so hot, the processing (except for very high-end magazine and advertising work) was shaky, and the volume wasn't there. For pros, only some jobs called for color images, the majority of photographs that were reproduced in print-even on television-were black and white. Color reproduction in magazines and books was usually poor right up to the 1970s or early 1980s. Sometimes it was downright lousy.

Today, we live in a full-color world. For photo viewers, even the color photos in newspapers are pretty good. Color images in magazines, books, and– gasp!– television too, are usually crisp and well-balanced


For the makers of photographs, including the amateur photo enthusiast and even the family snapshot photographer, today's color films and prints are reasonably priced and better than ever. For the pro, almost every customer wants color, and the exquisite films and quality processing and printing that is available allows us to produce photos that drip with eye-popping color. When that's appropriate. The result of this full-color media world is that today many photographers shoot everything in color.

Along the way to this full-color media world (starting around 1975-1980) there was an unintended consequence. The use of black-and-white film plummeted. There were many reasons: Manufacturers were offering better color film and processing at lower prices, while fewer and fewer commercial processors could do a good job processing black-and-white film. It even became hard to buy black-and-white film!

The result? The creation of black-and-white images dropped precipitously.

In little over a decade, black-and-white went from a basic photographic commodity to something that was a chore to purchase and tough to get processed. Lots of photographers, as we'll discuss in a moment, stuck with black-and-white in recent times and continue to produce fantastic work in that medium.

The people who have suffered are the ones who got excited about photography in the past ten to fifteen years. If you took up photography since say, 1985, there's a danger you haven't really had the fun of working with black-and-white film and getting good results. That's a real loss.

But it's an understandable situation. After all, if you have to work hard to buy black-and-white film, if you can't get someone else to process it, and if you can't easily buy the gear you would need to do the job yourself, then you would have to really be devoted to black-and-white images to learn how to make them and to keep making them. And, if you never learned how to do it in the first place, how can you keep the tradition alive?

But that was then. Now there's a different direction:

Black-and-white is back!

That's why it's time for you to get: Back to Black-and-white!
Black-and-white is back because it's part of the power of photography.

Black-and-white is back in print advertising. In today's saturated-color manipulated-image world, black-and-white feels real. To many, it looks fresh. This is true even though, as we'll discuss in this series, it's as easy to manipulate b/w images digitally as color ones.

Black-and-white is back because brides want to see black-and-white photos in their wedding albums.

Black-and-white is back because it's still a great way to learn about how film "sees" light. That's why good photo educators have never abandoned teaching beginners how to work with black-and-white film and images. That's why we still teach how to expose, process and print black-and-white film in the NYI Complete Course in Professional Photography.

The bottom line? Black-and-white photography is back because it's beautiful.

As we mentioned, for pros and long-time serious photographers, black-and-white never left. The fine-art market in vintage photography has mushroomed in part because black-and-white silver halide images are long-lasting and resistant to fading. There are lots of smaller newspapers that still ask photographers to shoot black-and-white when they know the photos will run in black-and-white. Street photographers who still admire the seminal work of Henri Cartier-Bresson expose countless rolls of b/w film in search of the "decisive moment." For this type of imagery, color can be downright distracting.

Black-and-white is educational.
As we mentioned, black-and-white photography is a great way to learn about the photographic medium. Many would argue it is essential: Concepts of highlight and shadow detail, image contrast, film and exposure latitude and tonal range are all best understood by studying the black-and-white image. The traditional "wet" darkroom is still a place where the magic of the black-and-white image appearing in a tray of developer under the pale red glow of a safelight captivates people who are new to photography.

There's magic in the black-and-white darkroom. The color "wet" darkroom is a maze of chemicals (some quite harsh) and stringent temperature requirements. In truth, you have to be a glutton for punishment to process color in a home darkroom. For color, the computer's "electronic darkroom" excels. But the black-and-white home darkroom is a relaxing, informal place, where the rich black-and-white print can be pursued at a leisurely pace while listening to one's favorite music, sequestered from the light and the hustle and bustle of the "real" world.

In fact, if the black-and-white "wet" darkroom were to disappear, the world will be diminished.

The educational value of black-and-white film is not limited to making black-and-white images. In truth, color silver halide images are actually made out of three (or more) layers of black-and-white images that interact with color couplers to produce layers of color dye that when viewed together give the illusion of a full range of colors. Whether you're learning to control color film and prints, or even the different layers of a color image that has been scanned into a computer, the more you know about contrast, exposure latitude, and highlight and shadow areas of black-and-white images, the greater your mastery over color will be.

In short, even if you're accomplished and comfortable working in color, you'll derive great benefit from learning about black-and-white photography.