To Black and White, or Not to Black and White

It's been a long, long time since I did any "real" black and white photography and I kind of miss all those years when I worked with black and white film. For probably 10 years black and white was my primary means of expression. I had a darkroom in my basement since I was in my teens (my father, a photographer, taught me how to develop film when I was about 10 years old) and later I worked for several newspapers and so shot dozens of rolls of film a week at times. I probably spent more time in the darkroom than out of it. And I loved it. Just me, the radio, cigarettes (in those days, no more), coffee and my darkroom. It was the best.

Today the only black and white work I do is converting digital images to black and white in Photoshop (did you know that all digital cameras capture their images as black and white data?). The process is very easy, you just select that option from the layers-palette menu and then you can adjust the tonality based on the original colors in the scene (choosing to lighten or darken reds or yellows or blues, for example). You can convert an image with just a few keystrokes and it's a lot of fun.

I shot this image of an old building not far from my house. It was once a famous costume museum on the grounds of the American Shakespeare Theatre believe it or not. (Thus the title of this posting.) I really like the color version a lot, but I think the black and white variation is interesting, as well.

Which do you prefer? Please don't forget to stop by my main site jeffwignall.com