The B&W of Photography

I have always been fascinated by black and whites (B&W) whether is be photgraphs or drawings or even paintings and as such i have made every effort to dig around for old B&W pics especially those with age and stories to tell or aesthetically tasteful. I am parial to b&w simply because of the challenge it gives for me to visualize the colors that makes up these pictures as well as its minimal value.



Whenever i talk of black and white pictures i am always reminde of the great Japanese Movies Director  Kurosawa whose early samurai movies were mostly done in Black and whites.



One of my favorite medium or technique when I create art is to draw or sketch in Black and white and in doing so I am forced to study tonal values of excuting monochromatic works. This is also apparent when I do my mono - prints only in doing these i have to reverse my percetion of light and darkness when i draw on to the plate. 



My next show will eopne on the 29th. of April at the Alpha Utara gallery and it will present some thrity pieces of my mono- prints. The process of making a mon - print I might have explained in my earlier blogs and it is the most simplest form of the Printmaking Processes. Print making includes the proces of Etchings which is the most commonly known, then there are various thers such as, Mezzotint, Acqutint, Intaglio, Lithographs, woodcuts etc.



What is most crucial about studying black and whites is the study of light and dark, for examle the source of light in the picture as well as the shadows that the objects cast  as a result. Most beginners artist tend to overlook the importance of ths shadows of objects and how important it is in making the picture more stable or 'solid' in form.



There were classes i attended while in college on the study of monochromatic colors and the difference in tonal values that enhances the work. This was very valuable for me in those early years and they have helped my a great deal in being able to 'pick out' the essence of a picture in one glance. Its shapes and forms and how they are being brought out of pushed back, modeled or shaped.



These pictures are not mine, none of them but i salvaged them from a construction worksite when an office building was being renovated. My ove for these pictures being black and white urged me to save them and now put them onto my blog which will hopefully save them for a long time to come. Most of these works were from former students at the USM Arts School. If any of the owners were to spot these pictures they can contect me for the originals for whatever it is worth. I just felt that it is a shame if not a wasre of good imges not to mention valuable Kodak films and papers to just discard them into the garbage dump.



This picture tells a thousand tales of our human existence for each of us can see in it all sorts of images, a journey, a trail, the road to nowhere from somewhere, the sense of giving up or despair etc. What we read in a picture may not be what the artist had in mind but what the artist had captured through his lens may conjure form with us all sorts of flights of fantacies if we are creative enough in how we see things (life).