Why Photography’s B&W vs Color Debate Is No Debate At All

5/25/2018 Why Photography’s B&W vs Color Debate Is No Debate At All
https://petapixel.com/2018/05/18/why-photographys-bw-vs-color-debate-is-no-debate-at-all/ 1/27
Why Photography’s B&W vs Color
Debate Is No Debate At All
In the 1950s, early color photography was widely scorned. Now it’s the default. What
happened?
MAY 18, 2018 LARS MENSEL
104
Shares
81 COMMENTS634 SHARE 104 TWEET 0 SHARE
News Equipment Tutorials Archives Send a Tip Links
0 1 M 672 K

Black and white, meet color. A composite made from one of the earliest, impractical color photos.
Prologue: No Space for Dreams
In 2015, Leica . It was for a special product in their lineup; a
digital camera that only takes black-and-white photos.
released a beautiful, ridiculous ad
Leica M-Monochrom - Free yourself from colors

The clip itself is strangely compelling. Set to hypnotizing black-and-white patterns, a calm
voiceover says B&W is purer than color. The hyperrealism of color, it points out, isn’t just overly
crass, it’s unnecessary. Color is an aid for people without imagination: “In the color world,
there’s no space for dreams.”
Of course, this is wrong. If anything it’s the other way around: color is actual, we don’t see in
monochrome. Insisting on black and white is often a pretentious turn. Leica’s ad rehashes one
of the oldest debates in the history of photography: Which is better, black and white or color?
The two do different things, the debate is fruitless. However, it helps to know about this
“controversy” in order to understand how we and photography got here.
Act I: Color is Bulls**t
Let’s recall that photography only became an art form relatively recently. When it came about at
the end of the 19th century, observers had considered it
. Leica’s ad used the same line of
argument—that something too realistic couldn’t possibly be artistic.
At first, photography competed with fine art: It required long exposure times and used heavy,
static equipment. The most popular subjects were landscapes and portraits—both hallmarks of
painting.
Portable equipment or rolls of film (a blessing compared to the unwieldy cameras or glass
plates used before) only became available around the First World War. It allowed
photographers to take pictures in previously unimaginable settings—and to differentiate the
photographic medium from painting.
Pioneers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and did it by deploying the realism in
unexpected ways. With their “decisive moments” and unexpected subjects, they froze the
unseen, demonstrating that photography was about beautiful compositions and subjects far
different from painting. The snapshot aesthetic emerged. Street photography was born.
“too literal to compete with works of
art” because it was unable to “elevate the imagination”
Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt was one of the first photographers to capture street scenes.
These now legendary photographers learned their craft in a black-and-white world. Which is to
say that whenever they took a picture, they knew it to be in black and white. The abstraction
was a natural quality of the picture—just like the two-dimensionality of the shot.
Color photography only became practical in the mid-1950s after film manufacturers had
invented processes that made color pictures sufficiently easy to develop. It was another
technological shift to change the medium, just as the portable camera and film before. And
perhaps inevitably, photographers now assumed the role that the defenders of painting had
before them: They refused to embrace the new technology.
Rather than enjoy their sudden ability to depict the world more realistically, artistic
photographers shunned color. In their minds, serious, documentary and fine art photography
had to be shot in black-and-white. Photography legend Henri Cartier-Bresson, known for his
evocative monochrome shots, even quipped that “color is bulls**t.”
Act II: Seeing in Monochrome
Why would Cartier-Bresson dismiss color so forthrightly? Most likely because black and white
works so differently than color does.
Subjects that look great in black and white often don’t look good in color. It’s for the same
reason that vivid color pictures look boring once desaturated. Images in the photo-historical

cannon were made for one palette or another. One sees and shoots in the same color or B&W
of your camera ﬁlm or sensors.
Tina Modotti’s portraits relied on the stark contrast of black-and-
white photography.
For the pioneers of photography, it had meant learning to shoot subjects that worked well in
black and white—just look at the high contrast shots of the Modernist like Edward Weston and
Tina Modotti, the abstract portraits of Man Ray. They didn’t just shoot in but also for black and
white, emphasizing form, contrast, and shapes.
“Color negates all of photography’s three-dimensional values”, Cartier-Bresson would later
claim. Black-and-white wasn’t limiting to him—photographers of the time knew how to use it.

A landscape by Henri Cartier-Bresson
These photographers’ ways of taking pictures also explain their stance when color arrived on
the scene. Color forced them to look differently. After experimenting in polychrome, Cartier-
Bresson was reportedly — and now he continues
to be known for his monochrome work only.
In , John Berger wrote that “paintings, before the invention of
photography, are the only visual evidence we have of how people saw the world.” I would
argue that black-and-white photos, before the invention of color photography, also give us a
clue how photographers saw the world: In beautiful shades of grey.
Just as black-and-white now looks reduced to our eyes, color must have seemed gaudy to the
photographers of the 1950s: It looked like embellishment. When advertisement photographers
embraced color, the artists’ disdain only grew. In 1959, Walter Evans dismissed, “There are four
simple words for the matter, which must be whispered: Color photography is vulgar.”
Today, that stance seems absurd. Color photography has long been the standard way of
picturing the world. What happened was yet another paradigm shift—and a small rebellion.
Act III: The World is in Color
While artistic photographers turned their noses at it, color film quietly conquered the global
mainstream. In the post-war years, photography turned from something only professionals did
to an amateurs’ hobby. The invention of (usable) color film—Kodak introduced Kodachrome in
1936 and Ektachrome in the 1940s—led to a gradual, popular adoption of color photography.
so unhappy that he destroyed his negatives
Understanding a Photograph

And why wouldn’t it? Why would amateurs, unperturbed by the dogma of black-and-white, use
black-and-white if they could capture life in all of its brilliant colors?
In the black-and-white years, being a photographer had meant developing your own film,
cropping pictures, and making prints. Processing color photographs, in contrast, was too
complicated for many professional photographers—but lent itself perfectly to amateurs, who
simply had their photos developed in a lab.
Most of all, it must just have seemed more realistic. Black and white “
”, but hobbyists just wanted to shoot realistic family photos.
William Eggleston once summarized what must have been on the mind of many people at the
time—and what we have come to accept:
“The world is in color. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Along with Saul Leiter, Steven Shore, Joel Meyerowitz and others, Eggleston is widely credited
with pioneering color in the artistic realm. In the 1970s, they made the switch from black and
white to color—despite fierce opposition.
“Photographers looked down on color or felt it was superficial or shallow,” said Leiter.
Meanwhile, photography legend Paul Strand told Shore that shooting in color was a “disastrous
career move”.
Saul Leiter used color as layers in his street photography.
elevated a photograph
from banality to a work of art

They wanted to rebel. To break out of the monochrome world that had been prescribed by
earlier generations. Joel Meyerowitz’ recent retrospective at C/O Berlin included plenty of
quotes demonstrating that the photographer perceived color as a way to break with
convention:
William Eggleston, who once proclaimed to be “at war with the obvious” followed a similar line
of thinking: He was able to take “perfect fake Cartier-Bressons” but wanted to do something
different, to challenge the status quo. “When I switched from black and white to color, the only
thing that changed was the film,” he said.
William Eggleston doubled down on color.
That isn’t quite true: The switch from black and white, as championed by these photographers,
went hand-in-hand with a change in subject matter. They started shooting subjects that weren’t
beholden to the logic of black and white—less geometric, high-contrast settings, but much
rather everyday occurrences where the colors stood out. Eggleston shot shopping malls, Leiter
the smudged colors of a rainy city, Shore the vivid mundane.
What I saw was that the color image had more information in it, simple as that! There
was so much more to see and consider, whereas black and white reduced the world to
shades of gray. And while that reduction had provided us with more than a hundred
years of remarkable images, we were entering a new era at the time, and color, for me
anyway, seemed to offer a challenge to the conventions that always undermine any
medium.
"

Steven Shore shot the vivid mundane.
In the excellent book , art curator Agnes
Sire writes:
It’s no coincidence that artists like Eggleston and Shore managed to picture banal subjects in
an interesting way, and it was their use of color that helped them accomplish it. The transition
from black and white to color was as much a transition from supposedly salient subjects—like
the photojournalism championed by Magnum—to the more poetic everyday object.
At ﬁrst, nobody wanted to see this kind of work. Now, the early exhibits of these photographers
are legendary. It took a while for the artistic world to open its eyes to a new kind of subject—
and to color photography. While black and white had turned the mundane artistic, the
pioneering color photos were successful exactly because they were mundane: They alerted
the general public to the hidden beauty in everyday life.
William Eggleston—From Color to Black and White

William Eggleston’s famous tricycle picture, an example of everyday
photography.
Epilogue: An Unresolved Question
Color is no longer controversial. It is simply the standard. Today black-and-white is mostly used
by photographers who enjoy the classic look, or in fashion shoots emulating the modernist
style, or by marketers who want to convey a vague notion of class and sophistication.
That doesn’t mean the controversy has been fully resolved, nor can it be. It’s not about being
right or wrong, being realistic or snobbish, forward-looking or old-fashioned. The controversy is
fundamentally about how you think the human imagination works–or how it should work.
“Color is not a question, but rather an answer”, Joel Meyerowitz has said. For a photographer, it
is a decision among many others, all part of their way of seeing and interpreting the world.
So let’s close with something the photographer Alec Soth said in an interview with Aperture a
few years ago, looking back at a black-and-white world:
Sometimes you think, eighty years ago the world must have been black and white. But
of course, it didn’t actually look like those photographs. The way that it was
photographed shaped that reality just as much then as now.
"

About the author: Lars Mensel is a photographer and writer based in Berlin, Germany. The
opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Mensel is also the host of the
podcast. You can ﬁnd more of his work on . This article was also
published .
81 Comments PetaPixel Login1
Share⤤ Sort by Oldest
LOG IN WITH
Join the discussion…
Recommend 2
Available Light his website
here
TAGS: B&W, BLACKANDWHITE, BWVSCOLOR, COLOR, COLORVSBW, CONTROVERSY, ESSAY, HISTORICAL, HISTORY, LARSMENSEL
104
Shares
81 COMMENTS634 SHARE 104 TWEET 0 SHARE
by TaboolaPromoted Links
Trendchaser
DirectExpose
Greeningz
13 Of The Most Attractive Female Billionaires
'I'm Back' is a New Digital Back for Old 35mm Cameras
Wild West Photos Showing What Life Was Really Like
Comparing the Image Quality of Film and Digital
Remember Linda Kozlowski? Try Not To Smile When You See Her Now
6 Excellent Film Rangeﬁnders For The Beginning Photographer

LOG IN WITH
OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS
Name
?
• Reply •
Easily_Enraged • 6 days ago
Snobs gonna snob. That's my takeaway.
14 △ ▽
• Reply •
William Yu • 6 days ago> Easily_Enraged
every generation past is a snob on the generation to come, just like every old person thinks,
"Kids these days..."
8 △ ▽
• Reply •
DefectiveSpeen • 2 days ago> William Yu
Kids these days are privileged idiots who have no clue about reality.
△ ▽
• Reply •
ZMWT • 2 days ago> Easily_Enraged
Do not aggravate your lack of knowledge with pompous and inaccurate articles like these. You
were wrong before, and now you are even worse. Given any existing sensor tech or film
emulsion, B&W film or sensor without the CFA, when compared to their colour versions, will
deliver SUPERIOR and VISIBLE micro-contrast in an image, every single time. The difference is
striking.
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
Easily_Enraged • 2 days ago> ZMWT
WTF are you referring to
△ ▽
• Reply •
Emacs • 6 days ago
B&W was not a choice at any time. It was a compromise. Even with the very first photographs, they
tried to color them, to give them vividness and life. B&W as we know today as artistic is the result of
developing new techniques in a constrianed medium. Mastering those techniques are sometimes
confused for art. Color removed some of those constraints. Suddenly decades of aesthetic values built
on those constraints became unjustifiable. Yet it is the advances in color processing that revived
monochromatics in the digital age.
10 △ ▽
• Reply •
Michael Mejia • 6 days ago> Emacs
Interesting point.
△ ▽
• Reply •
Trey Ardy • 4 days ago> Emacs
I suppose all the artists who use pencil or charcoal or pen and black ink are not aware of the
beautiful new invention of colored pastels, oil paints and other revolutionary means of coloring
their work.
2 △ ▽
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›

This comment was deleted.
• Reply •
Kirk • 3 days ago> Guest
Maybe you missed Trey Ardy's point.
Artists--who have had color available to them for millennia--continue to return to
monochrome for artistic reasons.
When artists choose to create in monochrome rather than color, it's because they
are specifically visualizing the image in monochrome for the specific strengths of
monochrome: The reduction of nonessential elements of their specific vision to
emphasize tone and form.
That's something a lot of photographers miss in this argument. I see it every time
in photo groups on Facebook when someone asks, "Which is better, the BW or
the color?"
That's a decision that artistically should have been made when the image was
conceived in the mind...afterward, if one is better than the other it's merely a
matter of happenstance, because there is a difference.
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
Trey Ardy • 3 days ago> Kirk
Exactly. The question is not which is better - chinese ink drawing or
impressionistic oil. The question is for whom and for which image.
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
Benson Stein • 2 days ago> Trey Ardy
Both are valid artistic choices, It is a moot argument on which is better. That being said, if
you study the old masters, they were cranking out far superior and more interesting
images IMO.
△ ▽
• Reply •
FBPhotography • 6 days ago
Shoot in colour, get channel to channel control for a black and white conversion. Shoot black and white
with an overpriced Leica and get whatever the camera decides to capture. Colour>black and white in
the information capture process. The rest is a matter of taste.
△ ▽
• Reply •
Paolo Bubu • 6 days ago> FBPhotography
Not so simple, a B/W monochromatic sensor is way better in low light and produces much
sharper images because it doens't have a Bayer filter.
12 △ ▽
Mark • 6 days ago> FBPhotography
This is really missing the point. The way that you choose to frame and shoot subjects is likely to
be completely different between B&W and colour shooting.
In the early days of photography, B&W was the only option, so people got good at composing
images that worked well in B&W. Today, you have the choice. You can shoot in colour, convert to
B&W or shoot B&W directly on film or with a monochrome digital camera
Avatar
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›

• Reply •
B&W or shoot B&W directly on film or with a monochrome digital camera.
But whatever you use to take the picture, what matters is understanding what your final intent is
before you press the shutter.
3 △ ▽
• Reply •
Michael Mejia • 5 days ago> Mark
"But whatever you use to take the picture, what matters is understanding what your final
intent is before you press the shutter." This understanding is a matter of experience.
Some folk displace this with presets, emulations or, in this case, a certain kind of sensor.
These have nearly become "style" presets presenting their own constraints.
△ ▽
• Reply •
Benson Stein • 2 days ago> Mark
Well said.
△ ▽
• Reply •
Michael Mejia • 6 days ago
I find the repeated resistance to transitions interesting. Older things are backed by an elitism, a sneer,
and a claim to Fine Art. The new makes more immediate capture of day-to-day experience for the
rabble? Doesn't take long to see through that argument.
⛺
22 △ ▽
• Reply •
Matthias • 6 days ago> Michael Mejia
:)
△ ▽
R l
Generic Hipster • 5 days ago> Michael Mejia
Calvin and Hobbes always cheer me up, thanks for posting. 👍
2
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Sh

• Reply •2 △ ▽
• Reply •
Athanasius Kirchner • 5 days ago> Michael Mejia
Dad's trolling level: GAWD
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
NuyaBizness • 6 days ago
The print is the thing not the screen view.
I walked in to Clyde Butcher's gallery thinking color was superior to B&W. When I walked out I no longer
felt that way.
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
William Yu • 6 days ago> NuyaBizness
if you are that easily swayed, would you walk into Saul Leiter's gallery thinking B&W is superior
to color, then walk out feeling differently?
My point is, the medium is not the message, but the medium to the message. :-)
△ ▽
• Reply •
NuyaBizness • 6 days ago> William Yu
I didn't flip them. I (subjectively) put them on par and yes I've seen / been to to a lot of
excellent shows galleries museums that are primarily or exclusively color. That said, I try
very hard to judge the print as a separate entity from the image I might see on a monitor.
It's simply not the same experience.
△ ▽
• Reply •
leethecam • 6 days ago
If it's B&W, it is art.
If it is big, it is expensive art.
If it has a famous signature, then it is saught after art...
:) :) :)
3 △ ▽
• Reply •
Emacs • 6 days ago> leethecam
Then you post to Instagram, it's not art. But if I screenshot it and print it bit and give myself a
royal name, then it's suddenly expensive art.
4 △ ▽
• Reply •
J. H. Engberg • 2 days ago> Emacs
-> This
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
Rob • 6 days ago
shoot with a foveon camera. They make for some awesome B&W and color photos
1 △ ▽
Zen-Tao • 6 days ago
B&W never happened. No-color was not possible until the arrival of digital photography. We used to
blow up and develop our pictures in the dark room using a range of photographic papers like Ilford
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›

• Reply •
blow up and develop our pictures in the dark room using a range of photographic papers like Ilford
Gallery, Oriental or Seagull all of them rendered some kind of diferent looks more warm like Gallery or
more cold like Seagul; besides we did heat treatment to dry them or simply time rendered different
qualities. Moreover it was common practice dying or turning colors by means of chemical processes .
No-color is a digital concept; these images are quiete harsh, whenever we print them they get color
again. Color black, of course, from our favorite brand of printer ink.
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
Michael Mejia • 6 days ago> Zen-Tao
Poetically put.
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
Pete Myers • 6 days ago
Not quite so simple on color, because we aren't there yet. The Bayer Matrix is a horrible little beast,
leading to a whole variety of imaging problems, not the least of which is color fidelity. Perhaps in future
years, we will be shooting with tri-sensor cameras, real dichroic separation filters, and either enough
sensor resolution or an OLPF to prevent aliasing. We are not there yet.
I pioneered digital monochrome photography back in 2002 with the nearly one of a kind Kodak DCS
760m. I was a technical consultant and beta tester for the original Leica Monochrom. What do I shoot
today? B&W film. Why? Because it remains magical, powerful, strong.
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
Michael Mejia • 6 days ago> Pete Myers
Magic? Hmmm. Charming, maybe. ;)
3 △ ▽
• Reply •
hoggleboggle • 6 days ago> Pete Myers
You should try a camera like the Pentax k1ii which can shoot by exposing each sensor to red
green and blue by shifting the sensor. This overcomes the Bayer limitations
△ ▽
• Reply •
edlau • 6 days ago
Just about any debate in photography is stupid. Just take pictures. Why make arbitrary "rules" for
everything?
10 △ ▽
• Reply •
Mark Houston • 6 days ago> edlau
Shoot pictures be happy...
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
JankoHrasko • 6 days ago> edlau
Because human nature is to hunt for one best unique piece which stands out. So they compare
which one is better, and then they fight....
But they don't realize thet even black and white photo is not black or white. There are a lot of
different shades of grey.
△ ▽
contrariant • 5 days ago> JankoHrasko
And absolute black or white is unattainable.
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›

• Reply •1 △ ▽
• Reply •
anotherview2 • 6 days ago> edlau
Please name an "arbitrary rule." I sense you have produced a straw man.
Debates about photography typically lapse into mere opinion. Words have nothing to do with a
photograph because it speaks in a visual voice.
Further, from what I observe, most people take snapshots. Relatively few people practice
photography with skill. Even fewer people produce worthy photographs.
This spread in quality arises from the function of photography as a craft that may rise to art in the
right hands.
△ ▽
• Reply •
Jon Kellett • 6 days ago> anotherview2
Arbitrary rule: Shoot no slower than the inverse of the (35mm equiv) lens length on a
non-stabilised lens. Absolute rubbish if you have decent technique.
Photography is full of arbitrary rules, which more correctly be considered as advice or
guides.
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
anotherview2 • 5 days ago> Jon Kellett
Doing the craft of photography with skill involves knowing and applying principles,
concepts, rules, techniques, guides, recommendations, practices, and suchlike
elements of the craft.
As to your example, yes, it has more to do with the practice of hand-holding the
camera and lens steady enough at a slow shutter speed to avoid motion blur in
the image. I'd label it more as a practice, with the proviso that it requires careful
attention to the use of it.
We do need to describe the elements of the craft with clarity.
△ ▽
• Reply •
Kirk • 3 days ago> Jon Kellett
Jon Kellett, that's not a universal physical law, but it's not arbitrary. It's a general
thumbrule that proved very useful for people who shot handheld in the 36x24mm
format and enlarged their images to no more than 10x or so prints. There is some
very specific physics behind it, when the controlling factors that were common at
the time are understood. It's no more arbitrary than the "sunny /f16" rule.
In today's parlance, it's better to call such things "hacks" rather than rules
(because the word "rule" seems to trigger some people). It's a practice someone
discovered to work for him consistently, then other people discovered that it also
worked for them consistently. No hack works for everyone all the time, but when it
works, it works, so it's useful to know.
△ ▽
DJ • 6 days ago> edlau
Th k ! I j t b t t t th t th it t f t d b t
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›

• Reply •
Thank you! I was just about to comment that these sites seem to manufacture debates.
△ ▽
• Reply •
Geo P • 6 days ago
Photography started in Black and White, and pretty much remained in
black and white for more than a century: the classic look of a serious
art. As correctly stated around the mid-seventies , color started to appear on film,
sometimes by choice sometimes by experimentation, signaling a new era
for the media. It added a new layer of information to that masculine 20th
century feel that people so much had gotten used to. Certainly such
change was bound to create controversy that was not in favor of color in
its early beginning. But that photo of William Eggleston's Tricycle,
with its rusted, red handlebars, its wonderful blue toned seat, and the
chromatic play of the white rims existed by itself, for itself, through
itself. It stands exalted. Color is not an afterthought here. Forty
years later and although tricycles still have 3 wheels, the spectrum of
light has Photoshop. It is the digital darkroom, the place where color
can be more than what it is in reality. Controversial but required in
this digital age, sublime yet vulgar sometimes, image processing for
photography has undoubtedly created a new art media beyond the choice of color or B/W, and that’s a
good
thing right?
2 △ ▽
• Reply •
Daniel D. Teoli Jr • 6 days ago
Yep, I was a BW snob in the 1970's. I would look down on the color photogs…I was a purest. As I look
back on it I can see it was all ego driven nonsense.
Sometimes the image will work either way. If so, do what you like. Other times it needs to be in color or
BW only. Let the image decide and do what is best for the image…not your ego.
This example could have worked in BW or color. But when it goes BW you lose the bluish light on the
upper left. The blue light signifies the prostitute may be a transwoman. So, that information is lost in the
BW version.
⛺
△ ▽
• Reply •
Brandon Rechten • 4 days ago> Daniel D. Teoli Jr
Counter point: this image doesn't work either way
△ ▽
editorsteve • 6 days ago
Scrimped and saved for my first good camera -- a Miranda SLR -- while in high school in 1963. I still
have it. Developed B&W back then, and added Cibachrome at home when it became available. Loved
Kodachrome 25 and 64.
The article misses a key point. Color was VERY expensive for use in journalism, and often impractical
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›

• Reply •
y p p j , p
under deadline. So the standard for mass photography was B&W even into the 1990s.
Even in the 1970s, color separations cost hundreds of dollars each (equivalent to thousands today). We
could gang multiple transparencies to do one separation set, which we would then cut apart, but that
trick didn't work with critical stuff like human flesh tones. Color would be available on only 4 or 8 pages
in each issue, on magazines I worked for.
People Magazine started out B&W, long after color was technically possible, because B&W was easier
to edit (airbrushing!) and shoot on deadline. The only color I shot for Sky & Telescope Magazine in my
time there (1966-69 while I was in college) was for cover art. For inside pages, if I happened to capture
a picture on transparency film, it was converted to B&W.
Not until the 1980s did color get cheap enough for semi-routine use in most magazines. The Web,
which went graphical in 1993, made color trivially easy.
10 △ ▽
• Reply •
Michael Mejia • 6 days ago> editorsteve
Good knowlege!
1 △ ▽
• Reply •
anthonycamera • 5 days ago> editorsteve
I just responded with a similar argument and didn't see this until after I posted but I'm glad
someone else remembers the all important cost constraints
△ ▽
• Reply •
editorsteve • 5 days ago> anthonycamera
Most people dont realize that you could not use photoshop to save as CYMK until
1980s....
△ ▽
Kirk • 3 days ago> editorsteve
editorsteve That was similarly true in professional portrait photography. An essential part of the
"professional" custom portrait photography was retouching. Ma and Pa storefront studios
retouched their black and white negatives with soft pencil and sharp knife. I learned it myself
back in the day, even in the latter 1960s. If you wanted color, you then oil-toned the black and
white print.
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Share ›
Sponsored Links
It’s Like eBay, But Everything Sells in 90 Seconds.
(Tophatter)
The Must-Play City Building Game this Year
(Forge Of Empires - Free Online Game)
He Transformed His Belly With One Thing
(Gundry MD)
New York: Born Before 1985? Gov't Program May
Pay Off Your Mortgage (Only if You Cl…
(HARP Refi Quote)
l i ll
PREV NEXT

I Shot Photos of
Cameras Placed on Film
This Eye-Popping
Flyover of NYC Was
Shot in 12K
business.adelphi.edu VISIT SITE
Go global with our M.B.A.
Ad

TRENDING POSTS
Photographer Captures Eagle and Fox Fighting Over
Rabbit in Midair
MAY 23, 2018403 SHARES

This Camera Got Melted While Shooting a Rocket Launch
Fujiﬁlm X-T100: Most of the Goodness of the X-T20 for Just
$600
24 HOURS AGO77 SHARES
How I Shot A Wedding With Just One 35mm Lens
Northrups Sue Photo Thief, Make Them Pay $60,000

Why Infrared Images Look the Way They Do
Royal Wedding Photographer Reveals How Viral Photo Was
Shot
Do $5,000 Camera Lenses Float?
Perspective Distortion, Or: Why Lens Compression Doesn’t
Exist

This Photography Jacket Was Inspired by the US Military’s
M-65 Field Jacket
Sony Investing $9B in Image Sensors, Aims to Be Top
Camera Brand by 2021
Emilia Clarke’s True Calling is Posing for Stock Photos
This Photographer Uses a Quad-Flash

Tornado Forms in Front of a Timelapse Photographer’s
Camera
70 Inspirational Quotes for Photographers
People Magazine Once Paid $10,000 for a Photo It Didn’t
Even Want
Apollo Lets You Magically Edit Lighting in iPhone Portrait
Mode Photos

Here’s a 4K Flow Motion Timelapse of an African Safari
Google Photos Now Lets You ‘Star’ and ‘Heart’ Pictures
Canon is Now in the Sensor Business: 120MP Monster
Unleashed
Copyright © 2018 PetaPixel
News Gear Inspiration Tutorials Reviews Archives Podcast
SUBSCRIBE OUR NEWSLETTER
TO STAY UP TO DATE
your email
SUBSCRIBE
0 1 M 672 K
ARCHIVESARCHIVES

Why Photography’s B&W vs Color Debate Is No Debate At All

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Why Photography’s B&W vs Color Debate Is No Debate At All

Similar to Why Photography’s B&W vs Color Debate Is No Debate At All (20)

More from Ram Chary Everi

More from Ram Chary Everi (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Why Photography’s B&W vs Color Debate Is No Debate At All