27-0512_0122-12-USA
If you’re reading this, then you must be in front of a computer monitor. Chances are that your computer monitor was manufactured sometime in the last five to ten years, in which case it’s most likely set to show 16,000,000 colors. SIXTEEN MILLION COLORS!!!!!!! It would be quite the task to name each one, but fortunately they have simple numerical values which are combinations of the three separate values for Red, Green, and Blue, 256 values each.
Mother Nature could care less. She goes on manufacturing colors as a “second nature”, as a “natural” by-product of all the elements that make matter on this planet, or rather in the universe.
One of my first assignments as an Education Coordinator at Eastman Kodak Company back in 1991 was to produce and deliver a seminar to newspaper editors and photographers to help them overcome their fear of color photography. As technology made it easier to print newspapers in color, driven primarily by the advertising industry, so did publishers and editors feel compelled to switch to color. In fact, in the early days of newspaper color, circa late 1980’s, the only editorial color photos appeared on the same sheet, i.e. printing plate, where a color ad was featured.
It was remarkable to me how initially the photojournalists were so reluctant, and even adamantly opposed to color photography. They felt that a color photograph was not true, and that color detracted from the story, that color made the photograph beautiful rather than honest. In some cases I simply saw a group of mostly men who were set in their ways, and who were afraid to learn something new, as color photography was no longer simply about capturing the scene, but also required knowledge of color temperature, and its effects on the photographic image.
Today, it’s rather the exception to see black-and-white photographs in newspapers, and when you do, it’s usually a conscious statement.
Some of the most beautiful and coveted photographs of nature are black-and-white, for example the incredible works of Ansel Adams, who created the Zone System as a tool for ‘non-scientific-minded’ photographers to manipulate film exposure and processing for optimum results. The same photographs in color may not have the same visceral or emotional impact. The same could be true of some color photographs of nature, where the color itself is the emphasis, and which the photographer captured because of the color rather than his or her previsualization of the tone values in the more abstract black-and-white image; or in the case of digital photography, grayscale image.
Henrietta, New York, circa 1990
(written November 22, 2006)
