18-MAY-2008
Abandoned house, Placerville, California, 2008
The subject of this photograph is monochromatic – a weathered gray building that is disintegrating before our eyes. The only color in the image was a sun-struck patch of dead brown grass and the live green weeds in the foreground. The brown and the green colors drew attention away from the dilapidation of the building, which was the point of the image. By converting this photograph to black and white, I remove these conflicting colors and instead focus attention on the decay before us.
18-MAY-2008
Cosumnes River, California, 2008
The huge rocks that litter the Cosumnes River have relatively little color in them. Seen in color, these rocks are largely brown/black, with greenish water swirling around them. By converting the image to black and white, we process this information differently. The rocks become less real and more symbolic. They are now satiny black, the water embracing them in gouts of white froth. The abstracting power of black and white imagery now goes right to the soul of the subject itself, which shows us how the forces of nature have created the world we live in.
24-MAR-2008
Camel herd, Sawai Madhopur, India, 2008
Dozens of captive camels filled the road around our tour bus. I made dozens of pictures of the herd itself but I liked this wideangle shot the best – which I abstracted down to just black and white shadows, legs and feet. I converted it to black and white, which increased the degree of abstraction by removing all traces of coloration from the image. The image becomes more of a symbol and less of a description.
27-DEC-2007
Portrait One, Hoa Phong Lan Handicapped Children’s School, Dalat, Vietnam, 2007
Most of the children at this school were thrilled that we were visiting them. They reacted very emotionally to my camera. This child could not show me his pleasure. He could only look back at me. It was as if he was in one place, and I was in another. Such is the nature of his handicap. He was sitting next to window, his face half in shadow, half in light, a contrast that can be seen as a symbol for the two sides of a mind in conflict. When I first looked at this image in its color, the blue clothing and color in his face neutralized the power of that contrast as a symbol. When I converted it to black and white, the image gives us a better sense of what must be going on within him.
27-DEC-2007
Portrait Two, Hoa Phong Lan Handicapped Children’s School, Dalat, Vietnam, 2007
This child was another who was unable to emotionally respond to our visit. I made photograph after photograph of her, and unlike most of the other children in the class, who were clapping and smiling with pleasure, she remained half turned, as if she was lost in a world of her own. Once again, the color version of this image was filled with distracting detail. Her light blue sweater dominated the image. As soon as I converted it to black and white, the distracting color was neutralized and our attention becomes focused on her distant state.
07-JAN-2008
Flashback, Chau Doc, Vietnam, 2008
I spent about a half hour photographing street traffic from the fourth floor balcony of our hotel overlooking the central square of this town near the Vietnam/Cambodia border. Of all the images I made from that balcony, this one was the most memorable. He came out of the shadow of the tree like a phantom figure from the past, wearing a costume common in rural Vietnam fifty or 100 years ago. Yet there he was, balancing his wares on a single pole, abstracted by his conical hat, his shadow extending from his body like a ghost from another time. This image was a perfect candidate for black and white, an abstracting force that made the image less real, more ghostly and far more universally symbolic of a Vietnam that no longer exists.
31-DEC-2007
Cyclist at rest, Saigon, Vietnam, 2008
This woman must have been waiting for someone for a long time. Is she bored, tired, thoughtful, depressed, or all of the above? Her mask and gloves, intended to counter the ravages of bad air and to protect her skin from wind, sun, and dirt, shroud her in mystery. By converting the image to black and white, I was able to eliminate the color of her clothing and the tourist bus parked across the street, and make her into a symbolic representative of all the harried commuters who run the gauntlet of Saigon’s throbbing, roaring motorbike traffic twice every day.
16-JUL-2007
Bowl, Phoenix, Arizona, 2007
Something a simple as a fireplace ledge holding a small bowl can become a memorable image if textures are called into play. This image becomes a feast for the fingertips. We want to reach out and touch the bowl and the ledge on which it sits. The ledge is next to a floor to ceiling arched window in my living room. It only gets this kind of light for a few minutes each day. When I converted this image from color to black and white, it seems to move back into time. By removing the color we abstract the photograph down to its essence – the timeless interplay of light, shadow, texture, and form.
24-DEC-2006
Place Jemaa el-Fna, Marrakesh, Morocco, 2006
For centuries, this square has been the nerve center of Marrakesh and the symbol of the city. It has hardly changed. I made this photograph from the terrace of a restaurant overlooking the square, and converted it to black and white to stress the timelessness of the scene. Thousands of shoppers visit its markets, stalls, wagons, and shops by day. Outdoor restaurants are set up each evening, jugglers, dancers, and snake charmers perform, and the square echoes round the clock to the sound of North African music and throbbing drums. By reducing all of this to a black and white abstraction, such details are not seen, but left to the imagination. Note the flow of body language that carries us through the entire right center portion of the image – from bottom to top. It begins with the woman at center bottom carrying a large bundle on her back. Behind her, near the middle of the image, a man appears to be reaching for something. Behind him, a lone figure carries a tote bag. In the upper right hand portion of the image a motorbike drives away from the square towards distant carriages and individual strollers. The black and white rendering removes all detail, making these figures into abstract symbols of activity, and defining the essence of this square as Marrakesh’s central meeting place.
26-DEC-2006
Whitewash, Marrakesh, Morocco, 2006
This subject screamed for black and white as soon as I saw it. A man was up on a ladder, applying coats of white wash to an ancient arch – an entrance to the souks in Marrakesh’s old city. The black and white medium compliments the very nature of both task and setting – the gleaming white arch and the dark black shadows of its interior are utterly without color. I abstract the painter himself in the process. His sweater and skin tones become as monochromatic as his subject.
27-SEP-2006
Firehole Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, 2006
Yellowstone’s scenery originates in its volcanic past. The center of the park is a vast caldera, the residue of volcanic eruptions. Yellowstone has erupted three times over the past two million years. The most recent eruption, about 650,000 years ago, created Firehole Falls near the northern rim of its caldera. The Falls surge over giant lava rocks, a perfect subject for a monochromatic image. I used a fast shutter speed of 1/500th of a second to freeze the churning water into lacy threads of frothy bubbles. The black and white rendering makes the image timeless, which is appropriate to Firehole Falls, itself a product of time.
07-AUG-2006
Billboard, Houston Street, New York City, 2006
The face shouting at us through a mass of trees comes from a huge black and white billboard. The leaves, photographed with back lighting, were black. The only color in the scene was a bit of green translucence on the edges of some of the leaves – color that added nothing to the image. When I converted it to black and white, the image became unified and coherent. The shout becomes even more surreal when the reality of color yields to the abstraction of black and white.