The Simple

One of life's simple pleasures is sitting at home, on the floor, in your lounge, watching Family Guy and developing film you had shot an hour or so earlier.

It's simple and it's rewarding. It's funny (the TV show - mostly) and creative (the photography - sometimes). And at the end of it you have a developed roll of film ready for hanging in your shower to dry, and a TV show you can see repeated in a matter of weeks. Simple.

Call me slow on the uptake, but as I was wandering around shooting said roll of film, it occurred to me that there is quite a difference between black and white and colour photography.

Successful shots can depend on quite different things. Colour is dominated by um ... colour. For the photos to work the colours need to work together. One problem I've been having with a series I've been working on lately is that the combination of location, technique and colour has meant that the subject is often lost in the image. Meaning the image fails to connect. Not that I'm showing you any of those shots.

So change to black and white and different things happen. Because of the lack of colour you loose the option of spot colour and colour contrasts to differentiate aspects of the image. So you need to think about other ways to bring the elements out. And, this is where the sudden, long overdue, revelation was for me, light is a great way to do that.

Generally speaking I have approached all photography the same. Put film in camera. Point camera at something. Make exposure. If the light is good, then the photo will be too. But now ... I may have to change my approach a bit.

Maybe.