I'm posting another note to see if I can get anyone else interested talking shope about the non-color/color black and white. I'm researching what these two words mean to photographers. As a photographer what do you think of when I say Black? And how about when I say White? Go back and look at the previous discussion Black/White to see where the threads have already led. Thanks!

Nelson

-- Nelson Taylor (americabizarro@hotmail.com), February 07, 2001

Answers

on "Black" and "White"

With all due respect, Nelson, your question is meaningless. "Black" does not _mean_ anything; nor does "White". It is about the same as asking a musician what the note "C" means.

It is only the complete image that can have meaning, just as it is only the complete performance of a piece of music that can have meaning.

-- Jason (jkefover@york.tec.sc.us), February 07, 2001.

Thanks for honesty...

Jason,

Thanks very much for your honesty. With all due respect back, I find that hard to believe. Certainly these two words mean something to some B&W photographers. Maybe not even in the tangible sense.

Nelson

-- Nelson Taylor (americabizarro@hotmail.com), February 07, 2001.

As a photographer, "black" and "white" bring to my mind the concepts of "limits" and "implication".

I think of black and white as the limits of the tonal range of the image. When photographing, I am concerned with identifying the tones in the subject which I will print as pure black and pure white. These will be the boundaries of the tones.

Also, although pure black and pure white areas of the print can contain no detail, no information -- they can imply a great deal of information. When photographing, I try to be aware of the what will be implied by the areas of black and white in the print.

-- Chris Ellinger (ellinger@umich.edu), February 07, 2001.

Middle C means 262 Hz, more or less, with A440. Has actually quite a bit more specific meaning than "black" or "white". Definining one note and a temperament defines all the notes of the scale.

Chris put it nicely: black and white contain no information nor detail. But they act as if they do.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), February 07, 2001.

ah, a musician chimes in. thanks, charlie. okay, let's say black and white mean nothing, or don't have a "specific" meaning. okay, so step out of the box. conceptually, are things ever as they appear? are things merely their generally accepted definition. of course not. there are multiple levels to everything. i am a writer. the more sense i can make on multiple levels the more resonance, the more life it will have.

how about this? black means something very different to a coal miner than it does to a photographer. no? i would assume at the most base level that black to a coal miner is akin to cold, dark, silence, etc. can black (or white for that matter) be explained on this level from a photographer's point of view?

-- Nelson Taylor (americabizarro@hotmail.com), February 07, 2001.

yes, like chris said...the concepts. do the concepts of limits and implications come to mind for other photographers?

and chris, i don't get what you mean by "implications." can you explain that one more.

i understand what you wrote about tonal range. that brought up a great mental picture...you making black or white out of something that is not black or white. while i'm sure this is a stupid question, i'll ask anyway. is there anything other than light, shadows, or colors (any variance of light) that plays into your choice between what will be pure black or pure white? and then what is implied by the black and white is always different, i'm sure, depending on the context of the photo.

-- Nelson Taylor (americabizarro@hotmail.com), February 07, 2001.

Charlie,

You've missed my point. Yes, when a musician sees a specific note designator on a piece of paper his or her brain translates that mark to a specific frequency on an instrument. But that is not _meaning_ that is _designation_ it's the difference between essence and name. But even if it were granted that middle C _means_ a specific frequency, you have still missed the point of what I was saying. Let's say that a musician plays that one note, just once, in a performance. To say that the "score" he played _meant_ something would be absurd.

Likewise, to say that that the black or white or gray areas of a photograph have meaning independent of the specific photograph is also absurd.

Jason

-- Jason (jkefover@york.tec.sc.us), February 07, 2001.

Too bad Saint-Saens is dead. He reportedly saw different colors when he heard different musical tones. Sounds like the nerves ran too close together.

A friend asked if he tried psychedelic (sp?) drugs and he said no. He didn't want to ruin the effect and thought drugs might.

Things are never really as they appear. We're just receiving electro- magnetic radiation and interpreting it. We all interpret it a little differently. Two photographers are at the same location, same time. Each takes a picture. Each picture will be different and influenced by the individual photographer's perspective.

Culture has an impact. I was in Taiwan last year. In wandering around, we came across a district where it seems all the wedding photographers had shops. Many had display books out. Virtually all had the highlights washed out-that is pure white. Very high contrast. All were in color. Most US couples would not have considered these acceptable photos. Apparently, however, it is preferred (or in fashion) there.

The coal miner and photographer both work in the dark. And both need light to do their work. Yet the photographer probably does more of his work in total darkness than the coal miner. The photographer, I'm guessing, fears the darkness less, since it is artificial where the coal miner's darkness is natural.

Imgagine getting completely up, showering, and dressing with absolutely no light. This seems a close analogy to what photographers do in processing their film. That's another meaning of "black" to photographers.

Insects see ultra-violet light, and we can't. Bats "see" using sonar. We can't see infra-red. But we can only judge our sight by the way it appears to us, so that's the only useful way to judge it.

In one of Ansel Adams's books, he mentions that in one photo some small bushes have no detail, they appear completely black. He said it was OK in a small print, but visually disturbing in larger prints.

I've had the same experience in a different way. I've got a negative I shot of a corn field in fall. It makes a great print in 5x5. I've never successfully printed it larger. The emotion just falls out of it. It is, however, mostly composed of mid-tones.

Many experienced photographers feel a larger print needs to be printed with higher contrast. It's quite interesting the way we interpret these things.

Back to sound, it's interesting to sit in an anechoic chamber for a while. Since the ambient sound level is below the threshold of human hearing, it's virtually total silence. Then you start to hear your body. Hearbeat. Stomach fluids. Joint movement.

But black and white in a photograph don't really have specific meanings. They are just the two end points, like the lowest and highest notes you can hear. It's like asking what specific meanings do the first and last marks on a ruler have. None in particular. Just where it starts and end. Nothing is darker than black. Nothing is lighter than white. A B&W photographer gets to decide what will be black in the photo and what will be light. Things darker than his choice for black will also appear as black. Things lighter than his choice for white will also appear as white.

But here is your ultimate definition of black and white for B&W photography as it applies to the negative/print process.

It's a pick-two out of three game. You pick two, and those determine the third.

1. what will be black 2. what will be white. 3. What will be the angle between white and black (that is, how steeply the gradation between black and white will be). Fixing any 2 decides what the 3rd will be. Ansel Adams called this the Zone System, and quantified it.

Mathematically, this is called a line. Pick any 2 points, and it defines all the other points on the line. Like the musical analogy. Pick a frequency for a note. Pick a temperament (ratios between notes). Scale is defined.

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), February 07, 2001.

Nelson,

Black and white as terms are meaningless to me. I work in the gray areas.

david

-- David Parmet (david@parmet.net), February 08, 2001.

hi -

'black' and 'white' as such don't have a any meaning whatsoever. it's what you ASSOCIATE with it that makes both of them alive...

read melville's moby dick, especially the passage called "the whiteness of the whale" and you'll never see white the same way as before.

volker

-- volker (malvolio@nerve.com), February 09, 2001.

thanks for the melville lead. does anyone else know any great passages about black or white from any genre of book?

also, volker, is what you associate with "black" and "white" different with every photo, or are there some constants that come into play?

-- Nelson Taylor (americabizarro@hotmail.com), February 09, 2001.

hi nelson,

i'd rather say that there is a range of 'constants' as you called it and the intensity with which they come into play vary with the object on the photo. take a low-key nude for example. the context tends to give the 'black' an erotic touch, whereas in a high-key landscape of, say, trees in the mist, the 'black' is more on the eery side.

volker

-- volker plaschke (malvolio@nerve.com), February 09, 2001.

Regarding the meaning of black and white: black represents all that is unsavory and evil in the world, while white is used by the experienced photographer to portray happy-making entities. It's kind of a Genesis thing, if you know what I mean. Those who under-expose their film tend to be motivated by vengance and malice. Bracket to maintain your options.

-- George Gunnell (georgegunnell@hotmail.com), February 24, 2001.

George,

Am I to take your comments seriously? If so, explain your reasoning. Otherwise, alone they seem rather limited, or maybe loaded is the better word, much bubbling below the surface.

Nelson

-- Nelson Taylor (americabizarro@hotmail.com), February 24, 2001.

Nelson, methinks George is speaking tongue firmly implanted in cheek. I personally was LOL-ing when I read his post. Even in esoteric, philosophical discussions, it's important to laugh at ourselves.

-- Mason Resnick (bwworld@mindspring.com), February 24, 2001.

Hi Nelson,

I know that this posting comes a little late. However, I saw some interesting discussions posted and I wanted to contribute one small thing.

Have you thought about how sometimes the things we perceive, on a physical level, such as black and white can be quite the opposite? To put this in perspective, I am speaking on a spiritual or religious level. I am not a hugely religious person, but I have changed my ideas about religion and spirituality in the last year due to some personal experiences and have seen things as I've never seen them before. It's hard to put these ideas into words, unless you have actually experienced it. I guess it's like the overused term, "the zone". When you are there, I think that sometimes we get a little too confident and we should be sure to note that just because something is dark, it is not necessarily black and the same for white. I am not a professional photographer (that is my dream though.) However, I feel that photographers are the people that can bring these types of different perspectives into line in order to show others ideas they may have not thought of prior to looking at a particular photo. I think this is along the same lines as what Charlie had to say.

Great discussion!

-- Miriam Lara (mlara@nfa.futures.org), March 16, 2001.