MEDITATIONS IN BLACK AND WHITE

OPEN YOURSELF UP TO NEW AVENUES OF CREATIVITY

I once had a client ask to see some black-and-white nature photographs to place in a corporate environment. Since I hadn’t made black-and-white photos at all during my career, except on a rare occasion, I was surprised. But her simple request led me down a path that was both creative and successful in terms of business. I have long been inspired by great black-and-white photography masters, such as Ansel Adams, Edward and Brett Weston, Minor White, and Paul Caponigro, which had led me to try a few conversions in Photoshop. You never know from where inspiration will come, but this project ignited my passion for black and white, and pushed me to expand my photographic repertoire.

Ansel Adams used to proudly declare in his lectures that his years of making a living from his photography taught him many valuable lessons. During his career, he accepted assignments to make portraits, still-life product shots, architectural work, and more. He felt that the problem-solving nature of commercial work informed and improved his art in terms of discipline and technique. Practice makes perfect, so they say. My black-and-white project provides a good example of creative results coming from a practical assignment.

The first step was to prepare and send JPGs to my client for her presentation. I received a list of color images that she found on my website. My assistant John and I compiled a portfolio using the Collections feature in Adobe Lightroom, which proved very useful for quickly previewing potential images converted to black and white. Once my black-and-white portfolio was edited down for my client, we made JPGs for her presentation.

A few weeks later, I received an order for seven 30x40, fine art, black-and-white prints. This was great news, but now the real work began. Each image had to be fully refined and mastered in Photoshop, then prepared for making the final photographs. We started with the high-res original film scan or digital capture. Next, adjustments to each image were made using multiple adjustment layers. Some layers were applied to the whole image, and others were applied using local masking. For example, if shadow detail needed to be improved, the mask would be specific to that area. The use of masks is much like the old-fashioned dodging and burning used when printing film to paper.

One thing I learned from viewing Ansel Adams’s prints is the value of tonal separation. His prints show a fine degree of detail in both shadows and highlights. The whites are never washed out and we can see many gradations of light grays and white. I especially love how his shadow areas show each subtle tone of dark gray and black. His shadows are never really pure black and formless, but show clear shapes and form within them.

It was Ansel’s inspirational prints that guided the black-and-white processing for this project. Once the images were finished in Photoshop, the printing began. Each file was sized to the final output dimensions, then sharpened for that specific size. The latest inkjet printers do an excellent job of handling black-and-white in their output. I used my Canon ImagePROGRAF, and I was very pleased with the results. We shipped them off, and the client was pleased too. Job done.

The final step in this creative journey was the creation of an eBook entitled Meditations in Monochrome, which I made available on my website. I wrote an essay for the book’s introduction and selected fifty-two photographs for this digital portfolio, ranging from classic western landscapes to intimate details of nature. Locations include the coast of New England, the deserts of the Southwest, and my backyard in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Becoming a better photographer is about building skills. It is also about following one’s passions and pushing oneself creatively. My Meditations project started with a business deal that opened a door I had wanted to go through for a long time—adding a black-and-white portfolio to my collection of images. I hope Ansel would be proud.

Cloud Reflections and Mt Moran at the Oxbow Bend on the Snake River | Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming | 1990

Mud Cracks | Zion National Park, Utah | 1983