My Black and White Vision

I love the colors that is I see in the world around me but my passion has been to create images in black and white from the world around me. Way back when I first started my newspaper career I shot all my assignments in black and white and on those are days off and holidays I loved nothing more than to load my Nikons with Kodachrome slide film and find interesting things to make pictures of in color. As my artistic vision matured I started to appreciate the black and white medium more and more, interestingly, my newspaper assignments had shifted to the use of color images ( and now digital ).

Early on I was inspired by the work of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Henri Cartier Bresson among others, I found their use of black and white film, beautiful compositions and dramatic lighting very inspiring. One of the things that I have had to learn is to "see" in black and white and I found it difficult at first to translate what I saw in color into black and white imagery, I was so used to visualizing my pictures in color. With time and practice I think I have learned to see a little of what the great masters saw in their own world, but I'm still learning to see something new every day.

The above image was taken at Otter Point near Sooke on Vancouver Island, I made the photograph with a 4 x 5 view camera and a 120mm lens on Tri-X film.