While I don’t necessarily like to set myself New Year Resolutions, the beginning of the year can be as good a time as any to think about areas of your life, both personal and professional, that you would like to work on.
As part of my end-of-year and long overdue, I might add, photography library tidy-up, I’ve been looking back at some of the black-and-white work I’ve created over the past few years. In the early days, to me at least, black and white photography was mostly thought of under two scenarios;
- When doing super long exposure images
- When the colour just didn’t work
I’m so glad that I’ve re-educated myself and now love to seek out situations in which I know black and white will work best.
I think black and white, more so than colour, has helped train my eye better for tones and contrast in a scene. Has made me understand better light and shadow. Perhaps even the ability to tell a better story in a single frame.
I’m challenging myself in the year ahead to think more about the black and white frame, perhaps even by this time next year having a collection of images which could perhaps be put together in a zine or similar.
The majority of my black-and-white work over the past few years has been created on my trusty Fujifilm X100T – still to date my favourite camera and one which still has its very own blog. This camera is now very long in the tooth, but it will still be by my side as we embark on some pretty big travel plans in the year ahead.
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Nigel Cooke Photography 