My Economic Vision

While on a recent road trip photographing along the westcoast of B.C., I started reading the book , " Walden" by Henry David Thoreau , I was reading through the section on "Economy" and I thought about my own economic situation and how it has partly shaped my vision in photography. I love to shoot pictures especially in black and white, and I have a lot of fun at it, pretty well my entire body of work over the past 20 years that I have produced outside of my job as a staff photographer for the Kelowna Courier has been in black and white. One of the reasons I shoot in black and white is that its affordable and fits my budget. Shooting in black and white on a regular basis has forced me to look at my subject matter in a different way than if I were shooting in color, at first it took me a while especially with landscapes to find interesting images that would work well in black and white, once I developed that "eye" I found all sorts of picture possibilities around me. One of the things with shooting film is that there has always been a cost difference between black and white and color film , going back in time when black and white film was the only medium available photographers had to develop an eye for making good black and white images which shaped their final vision.

Going further here with this thought, in this digital age what does the future hold for photographers who wish to create black and white images with their digital cameras ?, at the time of this writing there is no cost difference in shooting in either color or black and white, so why bother to shoot in black and white in the first place ?, if something looks interesting it can always be converted later from the color image. So if not having to shoot in black and white on a regular basis, will future photographers develop that special eye for black and white images ?

The above image was taken in Osyoos, B.C., of my Uncle Lewis with a Fuji GW690III roll film camera and a 90 mm lens ( Kodak T-Max 120 film ).