Completing the circle

When I first started taking photographs back in my teenage years, everything was black and white. There was colour photography of course, but not if you wanted to process at home in your own darkroom. Gradually, colour processing did become available and many of us migrated to the world of colour.

Digital, of course, is naturally a colour medium, so colour has become the default setting for the majority of today's digital photographers. But recently I have been asking myself why; what would happen if I decided to work almost entirely in black and white again? Sure, my files would still come out of the camera in colour, but that is quickly removed - the bigger challenge is to think in black and white when taking the picture.

I like the way that black and white can bring out the drama in a picture. The colour version of the blacksmith is a nice picture but nowhere as dramatic as this black and white.

Black and white also helps emphasise shape and tonality without the distractions of colour. Both these first two photos were taken at Iron Ridge Quarry, an interesting sculpture park in the Hurunui.

Back in Oxford, the old West Oxford Hotel has now been refurbished and rebranded as  the "Rustic Country Hotel".

So, perhaps it's time to close the gate on colour for a while and explore the world of black and white once more. Guess that means I've come full circle.