Why In Monochrome, Mostly

Why Monochrome

I've been taking photographs for decades, ever since I got my first very basic camera, which took 110 film cartridges, for my 10th birthday. I'm a little sad I no longer have it, and, despite much googling, I can't now established exactly what model it was. It looks quite a lot like the Kodak Fisher-Price camera, except that was discontinued a few years earlier and it wasn't red.

Not that it really matters, it was my first camera and my results weren't exactly stellar.

In those days, and in my subsequent 35mm film days, I always shot in colour. It simply never occurred to me not to. Then the digital era came and I started to put one or two photos into monochrome, then more and more, and more. It started with portraits. I found these almost always worked much better for me in black and white. Monochrome forces you to focus on lines and shapes, and in portraits the expressions, which, for me, is a key factor in good portraiture.

Then architecture. This, if anything, is an even more natural subject for a technique which brings focus to shapes as well as light and shade.

There were still areas where colour hung on. Landscapes, for example. Especially skies. But over time, I found myself defaulting even these to monochrome. Probably it was trees first.

But the more I put into monochrome, the more I found it worked for almost everything. Save, perhaps, a particularly special sunset or an especially striking colour.

Eventually I began to default to everything in monochrome. Once made, that shift was wonderfully liberating: it saved a significant amount of time in editing which I used to spend debating whether or not to convert each image. Mostly. Colour still had its occasional place, flowers, sunsets, and even a very occasional portrait. I'll also sometimes go for colour in a scene where there's one strong colour element, what has been called monochromatic colour, but black and white is my default.

Why Develop This Space

What, then, is the purpose of this site and what can you expect to see and read here? First and foremost, you'll find selected images I've made. Of course, there are other ways I could do that through various sites that are built to share photographs. But I also wanted to write about both my photographs and photography more generally, and none of those sites meet that need. While I haven't blogged for quite as long as I've been taking photographs, I founded Where's Runnicles, an arts and culture blog, in 2007. That site was primarily to write about other people's work rather than my own so something new was needed, and In Monochrome, Mostly was born. Whether your interest is in photography, writing, or a mix of both, I hope you'll find something to enjoy.