Returning to my roots...photographically speaking.

Dear Diary,

In college in the late 70's I majored in photography and film making.  My photographs were all black and white and film based of course.  No digital cameras back then.  When I seriously returned to photography in 2005 I went digital but I stayed true to my love of the monochrome image. 

In the last few years I have embrace colored in a wholehearted way but sometimes an image just begs to be rendered in black and white.  This was just such an image.  Yesterday I was wading through the  photographs I made in Tamworth and this one popped out.  It was just the kind of subject matter that enthralled me back in the day.  The simplicity of the composition, the light, the way it translated into monochrome perfectly made me realize that my roots in this medium are still strong.

Instead of hours in the darkroom, this image took only about half an hour to get right.  Do I miss the darkroom, the developing and all the trial and error processing?  Not really.  I like the spontaneity and freedom the digital world gives me.  No more worrying about "wasting film".  I am not a photographic purest in anyway.  A good photographic eye is good, or not, not because of the camera one is holding or the way you process the image but how you see the world around you and that has always been the most important element of photography for me.

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”   - Elliot Erwitt