Old black and white photo.

My mother used to always say that the only way to get a free black and white photo is to get your picture in the paper. Basically what she means is that the old black and white photo method has become more expensive than color pictures these days. I still like movies that are filmed in black and white and lately some movie directors have even used the contract between black and white and color film to represent mood changes in their movies. I always thought this was extremely effective if not overused. But black and white photography has made the turn from the way things are normally done to something different and artsy. Black and white photo art is featured in many prominent art magazines and some people even take their color pictures and Photo Shop them black and white. That means that they use the software Photo Shop to turn color pictures into black and white. What about going the other way? What about making black and white into color?

One of my favorite all time movies is Scrooge starring Alistair Sim from the early 1950’s. Scrooge was originally filmed in black and white and I like it that way. Many of the more classic Christmas movies, and classic movies in general, were filmed in black and white. I think those old movies being black and white adds character to them and makes them seem more warm and inviting. Several years ago the process of colorization was created which can turn a black and white photo to color. Going from color to black and white is a fairly simple process but going from black and white to color takes a lot of technology. It is technology that I sometimes wish had never been invented. I have seen old black and white movies colorized and they never look natural or right to me. It always looks to me like someone took a box of crayons and tried to add color to our favorite old movies. Luckily the process of colorizing old movies seems to have stopped and many people are rediscovering the beauty of the old black and white movies. Some new movie makers are even using black and white to film entire movies. Movies in the last 20 years such as “Ed Wood” and “Clerks” were filmed entirely in black and white and it adds character to the finished product. But for the older black and white movies it is true that great art is better left in its original form.

In the world of photo art many artists use black and white to capture a mood more than anything else. The stark contrast of black on white can often help sharpen a subject’s intensity or some other emotion that the artist is trying to convey. Shadows in black and white photography can seem to add character to a photo where color cannot. Sometimes the proper use of black and white shadow can cause a photo to have several layers of meaning and can add dimension to a photo that color just cannot seem to accomplish. It is all in the eye of the artist and many photo artists are very talented at using black and white photography.