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Channeling my inner Ansel Adams
How black and white photos make the best Mountain Vistas
As a photographer, I have a split personality. The photographs I like most are either overly saturated (Eggleston style) or black-and-white. I do not enjoy accurate representations of what I see. My day job is all about the in-depth, passion-free documentation of natural phenomena. Photography is escapism. In photography, I want to shape the shoots according to my inner vision. Otherwise, I would be using an iPhone all the time.
I mean no disrespect to iPhone shooters. There is a place for this particular tool of expression as for every other tool — my favorite, however, it is not.
I favor a dedicated black-white sensor in my camera. If I shoot in color, I post-process using the Fujii Velvia setting (Egglestone famously used Kodak Ektacrome, which is similarly intense and brings out red like crazy). Deciding which tool to choose for a particular outing is half the fun.
Last year, I went on a safari with only a digital monochrome camera, more recently, to the Swiss (and French) Alps. For analog, I am hooked on black and white film. Both offer more resolution than comparatively specced color cameras. Do they also provide more creative freedom?
