POLL - AP black and white special

[Damien_Demolder]

To coincide with our Black and White special issue (dated 7th March, on sale Tuesday 3rd March) we have a mono themed poll this week. It's quite a simple one, but one based around the intrinsic value of black and white images.

Head to the home page to vote in;


The picture I am most proud of taking is: a)In black and white b)In colour

Thanks for taking part

damien

[Fen]

Sorry... The photo I am most proud of taking is in colour.

But I've got lots of photos that I love that come a close second.

[huwevans]

Most definitely B&W for me. Not because it was B&W, you understand - it just that my proudest pic happens to be a monochrome one. That said, I do have a greater general appreciation of B&W as a medium than colour.

[Fire_Monkey]

Have to say, I always do colour. B&W is something I don't think about, although I appreciate some B&W pics!

[Barney]

Sorry... The photo I am most proud of taking is in colour.

But I've got lots of photos that I love that come a close second.

^^whs^^

[parisian]

B&W for me - easily

[TimF]

At the moment it would be B&W. That said, as John Peel quipped when he was on Desert Island Discs (or one of those progs) it could be a whole different set of favourites tomorrow!

[chris000]

Definitely Black and White, and that is pretty much all I shoot these days (I still shoot film no digital).

I see lots of colour shots by other people that I think are great, but it just isn't what I want to do.

[Dave_Cox]

My best shots are colour, but I do like a good B&W image. I've plenty of them in my negative files taken over the years, and a few good digi conversions too.

[gollum]

Done plenty of B&W with my old OM1n so I could have a go in the darkroom, but I have to it would have to be colour. I just don't see in B&W

[snowqueen]

B&W for me - easily

Me to ....
i think its because im using my old film camera and shooting blind, then developing the negs and printing the pics, since starting college im enjoying shooting in black and white and im liking the final image more

[Learning]

My best pictures are colour. The photographs I admire most are monochrome. Many of those monochromes are news from Magnum photographers, some are old Adams landscapes with exaggerated printing, some are quite vicious like those from Mapplethorpe. It seems to me that colour at its best is a very good reproduction of what was photographed. Monochrome at its best not only strips away superficial colour but allows the photographer to emphasise form and often emotion. I unfortunately haven't mastered that medium.

[Bettina]

Technicolor's my middle name.

[Monobod]

I have been experimenting recently with split toning, duo toning and multi toning using gradient map and various other techniques. At the moment some of my favourites are in this format, but I embrace a broad church and have monochrome and full colour images that I love as well.

Not everyone else does though and I have had mixed responses from club competition judges, who sometimes do not seem to recognise what is going on.

My favourites do change the more images I take, so it is not a constant thing.

[Zou]

I have to say that I'm not 'proud' of any picture. Pleased yes, delighted even, but not proud. I'm not responsible for the light, I just capture it on a bit of film or a CCD, using rudimentary controls of aperture and shutter.

Having said that, I would reckon that the closest I could get to proud would be for a B&W image, as the previsualisation and technique is not quite as straightforward as 'compose, set, click.'

[El_Sid]

Don't think I could describe myself as being 'proud' of any pictures I have taken - well chuffed with some of them yes but proud?... no. None have yet proven to be world changing or iconic so I don't think proud comes into it...

Most of my output is in colour but some of my favourites nonetheless are actually mono - something I honestly feel I should do more of.

Colour and mono are, IMO at least, very different disciplines and to be really good at either I reckon you have to concentrate on it. Black and white particularly takes some effort to learn to see how a naturally coloured scene will render when converted to shades off grey but, having said that, colour is not as simple as many think. Taking a picture in colour is easy but taking a picture where colour is an intrinsic and deliberate element of the composition is rather more tricky...

[alanS]

I can appreciate some mono pictures but it's not something that I want to do to death.

Mostly the android in me reasons that the world is in colour, I see in colour, the technology has advanced and allows me to take pictures in colour and therefore I should take colour pictures.

Colour has the advantage of allowing a more detailed capture of the beauty, richness, detail, diversity and descriptiveness that exists, much more so than mono, mono simply can never match colour. IMVHO.

Colour rocks, colour rules. Unless you want an easy way of capturing an atmospheric picture of an old bearded fisherman smoking a pipe.

[Benchista]

Colour rocks, colour rules. Unless you want an easy way of capturing an atmospheric picture of an old bearded fisherman smoking a pipe.

Well I certainly don't want that sort of tired old cliche, but I do like B&W. Personally, I've never had a problem shooting B&W and colour at the same time - in the old days, that meant for me carrying several cameras, but digital makes it much easier. I'll look at a scene, decide if I want to shoot it in B&W or colour, and set the camera's parameters accordingly so I can check the result on the screen - but I always shoot in RAW, so I'm not stuck with it. I reckon about 10% of the shots I choose shoot in B&W I end up using in colour instead, and about 5% of the colour ones end up as B&W.

I think my best shots are all in colour, but there are plenty of B&W ones I'm happy with.

[alanS]

Yup. I agree with that.

Shooting digital gives the option of being as artistically expressive as possible and producing a mono image is just one way in which you can be artistically expressive.

I don't think that I'd ever paint in black and white, but I like pen and ink, pencil and charcoal.

I think that mono has it's place but I can't see it ever being more than a tiny percentage of my photographic output and even in those cases I'd have a colour version or at least a RAW file to go back to.

[daft_biker]

Colour for me and by a long way. I don't do much black and white.

So far today I've visualised 2 colour images and no black and white ones....don't know if I've ever visualised a shot in black in white. Well at least not a decent shot anyway I seem to see in colour.