Black, White or Sepia?

When I started photographing stuff as a young man in the late 1960s, the world seemed black and white to me. (It would have to be black and white because that's all I could afford.) Colour film, and I mean Kodachrome slide film, cost so much that is was out of the question. Not for me that breathless wait for the little yellow and orange box of slides returned from Hemel Hempstead. Instead I used FP3 and developed my films covertly in the unused company darkroom at lunchtimes.

There was a skill imagining a scene in monochrome and deciding if it was a potential winner. Then in the early 1970s I was able to afford slide film and I had to make a choice before I went out with the camera. Colour or Black and White. Do I finish the slide film and come home after I've taken the remaining four shots?

These days it is of course very different. I take all my images in colour and work on the raw image files in the computer. It is only at that stage I decide if the colour image might look better in monochrome. In fact converting some lack lustre images to Black and White and then tinting them Sepia is the only way to rescue the situation. Here are some recent examples:

The Gate

Back down the farm lane yesterday lunchtime. I find several of the horse paddock gates are open, which is unusual. I like the shapes and lines of this one, but it had nothing to say in colour.

Wire

This large roll of paddock fencing is almost monochrome anyway, however the twigs and junk in the background proved a distraction, so I converted it. The result is more abstract as a result.

The old Villiers engine

In this case the sepia conversion is intended to enhance the old and worn feel of the subject. I don't know how long this old Allen scythe has been parked in the hedge, but I am sure it was some one's pride and joy years ago.

Sometimes you don't need to convert the scene to monochrome...

 

 The old chairs.

In this case they look just fine as they are... In fact these won't be the last stacked chairs I will show you. Perhaps I just have a thing about repeated patterns.