Fun With Cameras XXV

A Journey in Black & White

A man searches the banks of the river Rhine for returnable bottles. The background shows what I assume to be the facilities of the Walsum power plant and/or the former coal mine Walsum. I found this scene at a dead-end side street near the thyssenkrupp steel production site. I have multiple pictures from this scene, but I like the man’s position under the brushes here. Duisburg, Germany, September 15, 2022.

I enjoy a love/hate relationship with black-and-white photography. The clean aesthetic of classic black-and-white films hits me every time I steer my eyes towards the work of the Capas (Robert and Cornell), Elliott Erwitt, Josef Koudelka, or Eve Arnold; to name just a few of my favorites from the top of my head. However, my attempts at making black-and-white frames have resulted in disappointment lately, a fact I set out to change by returning to the location that set the stage for the last issue of Fun With Cameras and adjusting a few parameters of my workflow.

The calm, gentle, natural black-and-whites are my favorite. To squeeze in another one of my favorite photographers, René Burri’s images of the Brazilian Ministry of Health from 1960 are sublimely elegant and represent black-and-white pictures precisely how I enjoy them the most.

But I also enjoy the more dramatic look, the harsher tones, and stronger contrast often seen in conflict pictures from the past. In one word: grit. I’m far from an expert in black-and-white photography — film or digital. Though the more time goes by, the wearier I become of black-and-whites that appear to depict the world harsher than life.

Light determines in which direction a photograph leans, of course. But the editing intentions play a role also. When I first played with black-and-white, I intended for striking, higher contrasts.

The more I think about the use of black-and-white in today’s world, the more I prefer black-and-whites to be as natural as possible. That aesthetic leaves me with a more honest impression of the world compared to scenes with deeply crushed blacks, and more grit than ever hit my eyes.

I have another problem with non-color photography. As much as I enjoy black-and-whites, I usually prefer color. I often feel I lose an essential part of a photograph if I eliminate color. Unless color becomes a distraction, that’s pretty much my only reason for attempting a black-and-white conversion.

A few years ago, I found a satisfactory starting point for that process. But the more I progressed in my photographic journey, the less satisfied I became whenever I thought a photograph might work better in black-and-white. I either felt it didn’t work at all, or I got put off by the taste of harshness in my results.

That’s why I often didn’t even touch black-and-white lately.

To figure out where things went sour in my relationship with seeing the world in black-and-white, I returned to the drawing board. I reset my black-and-white workflow and started from scratch.

Firstly, I decided to make my cameras as black-and-white as possible. Picture Control set to black-and-white is as far as that goes. On top of that, I gave myself an additional incentive to remain on course.

The time I’ve spent with the work of some of the most influential documentary photographers of the 20th century gifted me a better understanding of what I want from a black-and-white conversion. If you haven’t read my thoughts on Magnum’s Contact Sheets, read that post as one example of those influences.

My standard recipe for black-and-white wasn’t satisfactory anymore. So I wandered. And I found a decent alternative on this site, which I could easily add to the custom settings of my cameras. My heart fell for a profile named after the classic reportage film Tri-X. No idea how realistic that is; diving into what I only know from childhood memories is definitely on my radar, but not for the time being. But I do enjoy the in-camera previews it gives me.

I used the photographs from today’s essay to recreate an approximation in my toning software (a custom tone curve, a few mild changes to the black-and-white mixture, and (oddly enough) a 0.6 exposure adjustment).

The result is satisfactory. I’m happier with my black-and-whites than I’ve been in a long time. Also, having the in-camera previews in black-and-white helps my mindset, even though I only sparingly use the screen in the moment. Somehow I was trying harder to see the world in black-and-white.

I’m enjoying the black-and-white part of the contact sheet (with a few exceptions, of course). I’m not missing color. If black-and-white were all I had, I would be happy. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t glad a colorized version was just a few clicks away.

To that end, I will share a few of my favorite colored versions on Instagram about a week from the publication of this post. For now, please find a gallery of pictures from a repeat photo ride to the industrial site I visited for the last Fun With Cameras issue below.

This time, the weather was cooler and windier. The sky was heavily clouded but not without life signs from the sun. The smells of the heavy industries enriched the air. And I used my time to cover the parts I had to forego last time. As always, click on any picture for a larger view.

Left I remembered an elevated viewpoint I could not reach during my last visit. I started today’s shoot with that in mind and found a small park with this view of one of the larger facilities of the thyssenkrupp steel production site in the background. One of the administrative buildings can be seen rising behind a row of residential buildings on the right. Duisburg, Germany, September 15, 2022 (location and date information is the same for all pictures in today’s post). Center One of the administrative buildings the steel production company rises above the neighborhood as seen from a small local park. I liked the light and the trees that lead toward the structure. Right I continued my tour around the vast industrial estate counterclockwise. Often, I couldn’t find a position to capture what I wanted because of too much visual clutter. Here, I wish there was a less obstructive foreground, but I wanted to play with the curved street as a part of the composition that leads to the industrial structures in the background.

Left Shortly after the picture before, I turned into a side street and explored the views from this little park. Center Most of today’s pictures were made with a 50mm lens. This is one of the mild telephoto pictures, which allowed me to fill the frame with the structure and eliminate most of the foreground (clutter). Right Just as I was leaving the park, I noticed the sun making a brief appearance and hitting the large facilities with its soft early evening shine. A man on an electric wheelchair passed through the frame at the same time. It’s one of my favorite pictures from today, and it’s one where I’m glad I have a colored version.

Left An explore farther north didn’t yield much, but I caught a brief glimpse of a tower that I found worth exploring. Right From the same spot, I used the 105mm macro lens to isolate a detail of the natural world around me: some berries and leaves.

A busy scene, but it’s another one of my favorites. I didn’t have much time to decide on framing. There’s lots going on visually and the smoke from the tower near the center of the frame was disappearing quickly. The 50mm was too tight and I had no room to move around. I quickly swapped to a 35mm lens and reframed. It’s still a bit too tight. The furnace on the right is very close to the edge of the frame (and I have additional pictures that don’t include that part of the scene), but I do like the additional smoke and the symmetry of two furnaces on either side. It also feels like the best representation of the scene as I remember it.

Left A man searches the banks of the river Rhine for returnable bottles. The background shows what I assume to be the facilities of the Walsum power plant and/or the former coal mine Walsum. I found this scene at a dead-end side street near the thyssenkrupp steel production site. I have multiple pictures from this scene, but I like the man’s position under the brushes here. Center The facilities of the thyssenkrupp steel production site as seen from the footpath leading to the waste tip Alsumer Berg. A different composition without the fence in the foreground can be found in the outtakes on Instagram a few days after publication. Right The facilities of the thyssenkrupp steel production site.

Left The facilities of the thyssenkrupp steel production site as seen from the waste tip Alsumer Berg. Center The view from the waste tip is often cluttered, so I tried to stand back a little and include the waste tip as foreground while only showing parts of the facilities. This is one of the images I think loses quality in black-and-white. Right Another form I tried to cope with the complexity of the scene is a panorama: four vertical pictures stitched together in post. The same about color applies.

Left A tree atop the waste tip Alsumer Berg is decorated with protective masks and other items. Not one of my favorites, but it’s a nice change from the urban scenes. Center The river Rhine and what I assume to be the facilities of the Walsum power plant and/or the former coal mine Walsum (horizon) and parts of the thyssenkrupp facilities (foreground) as seen from the waste tip Alsumer Berg. One of my favorite pictures because of the quality of the light and (yes) the colors about 60 minutes before sunset. But if I only had the black-and-white version, I would be happy and non-the-wiser. Right A cross stands on top of the waste tip Alsumer Berg.