Contributed By Russ Muller Photography
Not too long ago, you may have seen an article I wrote asking “where did all the color go?” In it, I shared some statistics that by 2025 81% of all new vehicles sold were either white, black, silver or some shade of grey. As a follow-up, I thought I’d spend a few minutes talking about black and white…
When I was a kid, it was a big deal to get a TV of my own for my bedroom. It was black and white, with a manual remote control (me getting up and walking over to change the channel) and rabbit ears for an antenna. Watching shows in black and white forced me to think about what I was watching and envisioning what the things on screen looked like in color. When I got a little older, and started to earn money of my own, I bought a color TV (with an actual remote…) and left black and white behind.
As I got a little older, I started to understand a little more about the color of black and white. What am I talking about? According to Britannica:
- “Strictly speaking, “black and white” itself is not a single color. Instead, it refers to a range of achromatic brightnesses—commonly known as grayscale—that includes black, white, and all the shades of gray in between.” (Sounds a lot like the new cars I mentioned in my previous article, doesn’t it?)
- White is technically the presence of all colors of the visible light spectrum combined.
- Black is technically the absence of light, where no colors are reflected.
Because these two encompass the full extremes of light and dark, a black-and-white image uses tones to represent brightness rather than hue.
Ansel Adams and Clyde Butcher are two of the true masters of black and white landscape photography. Their works inspired me to learn more about using greyscale and monochrome to create images. Color photos let your eyes see the image, black and white forces your mind to think about the image. Without color, light and composition become much more important. In photography, editing styles come and go: Soft and muted colors, gritty urban looks, etc. But black and white is timeless. While I’m still very much a work in progress with getting my images to tell a story, I have found black and white lends itself well to classic cars.
Last time I complained about the lack of color, this time I celebrate it. Go figure…
