About this time last year I made a decision to dedicate time to my photography, and in particular to improving my photographic skills. Following that decision I started creating my website as a place to begin displaying some of my shots (this blog followed 7 months later) and, a year ago today, I joined Dublin Camera Club.
Within a few weeks I was entering the club’s summer competition and quickly learned how far I needed to progress in order to compete. A particular weakness was my monochrome photography, and it remains so to some extent, although I have seen progress as I have found inspiration in other photographs to help me determine what is and isn’t suited to a monochrome treatment, and indeed better tools to use for post production to help with the conversion from colour.
That said, when I look at the list of images I have posted on this blog to date I still see almost 5 times as many colour images as monochrome. I think maybe I should accept that I’m pretty much a colour photograph kind of guy.
Today’s photograph, taken in Rome last October, is perhaps an example of why that might be. It has been in my list of images to be posted here for quite a while, but I’ve delayed doing so until now because, to be perfectly honest, I’m not quite sure if I like the shot.
I should say that I don’t really like it in colour either – I think it was just one of those occasions where the light was wrong, the composition options available to me weren’t great (although the rower rescues it a little, and I did actually wait for him to be there) and no matter what I did with exposure in camera, or with tweaks in post production, I couldn’t get an image that I really liked from it.
Why did I convert it to monochrome? Well, when I struggle to get a colour image that I like, my first attempt at rescuing it is to convert it to black and white. And this image still looks better in black and white than it does in colour.
That attitude to black and white photographs – seeing them as a way or rescuing a bad colour image – is probably disrespectful to those photographers out there who shoot with a black and white image in mind, and can create great images every time. It’s just that I have found, and I’m sure others have too, that on occasion an image that just simply won’t work in colour – be it because some elements are too distracting based on their colour, or you’ve messed up technically – for instance with the wrong white balance – may look better in black and white. Sometimes it is just more forgiving than colour.
I have, of course, some monochrome images that I’m very proud of – my shot of Meribel comes to mind (and not just because it’s taken with my favourite lens!) – and indeed some colour shots that I realise aren’t so good.
The competition season at Dublin Camera Club is starting up again soon, and if I was to set myself a goal for the next 12 months, a good one might be to enter shots in the monochrome competitions that aren’t simply poor colour shots that have undergone a rescue attempt (like today’s shot), but rather photographs that have been seen and shot with a monochrome end result in mind. That sounds like a challenge.
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