B&W is not supposed to be G&G

[milandro]

I see some B&W photography which is really Gray & Gray. 

 

Is it just me or do I get the feeling that it isn’t really clear to some that there is black and white and the grays in between?

[pizzaman]

It depends on the style of photographer.

There is no rule that says your tones must reach both ends of the spectrum.

 

Have you ever looked at the work of James Nachtwey? He went through a phase where much of his work was toned and printed in a very grey and very flat way - this isn't to say that there were never full blacks or white, but they were kept to a minimum. His website is super outdated but much of his agent orange work and XDRTB work, for example I would put in this category. I spent a summer internship printing for him and I remember how much focus we had to have on getting most of the image to be midtones. 

 

New piezography printing has helped digital b/w printing to where there can now be subtlety and detail in darker tones than before - I think this is a good thing, but some people like their images contrasty and punchy and that's cool too. 

[azmmount]

I'm not sure I'm following you. Are you saying that for an image to be B&W it must have tones that go from absolute black to absolute white?

 

I have always considered B&W to be no color. Some images, I think, benefit from the lower contrast appearance that comes with not spanning the full dynamic range between black and white.

[milandro]

No, I am not saying that all images have to have all the range between black and white, but some images that I see are simply images where the black have been turned into desaturated blacks resulting into greys and that’s not good. In my opinion this people have never made a B&W print in their lives. But this risks to turn into another old school versus new school thread.

[Trenton Talbot]

I see some B&W photography which is really Gray & Gray. 

Is it just me or do I get the feeling that it isn’t really clear to some that there is black and white and the grays in between?

 

It's a way to save an image that is otherwise totally screwed by unintended high contrast. Works well in both color and B&W. Unfortunately, the fad of making this effect into particular photographer's branded "look" isn't over yet.

[milandro]

Yes TT, relativism is the word, is the word! Claim it is a special effect and that it is your styel and all is fine and dandy!

 

I am not going to do that but I could easily pick a few examples and show exactly what I mean.

[Trenton Talbot]

Yes TT, relativism is the word, is the word! Claim it is a special effect and that it is your styel and all is fine and dandy!

 

I was raised on B&W photography in the 70s. We even had a term "brilliance", which meant that a technically good B&W photo must have something pitch black and something totally white (0 and 255 in digital terms). These "awesome sauce" presets that you're sarcastically referring to are just laziness, plain and simple. 

 

Photo sucks? Let's kill the shadows. Still sucks? Let's grey out the highlights. What, still crappy? Let's add a texture. And a fake tilt-shift. And an artificial glare. See, an instant masterpiece!

[milandro]

Yes, TT, I too am no longer all that young and spent a great deal of my professional life printing along using large format cameras.

 

If I would have shown my bosses, teachers, clients some of the gray and gray pics that I am talking about I would have been instantaneously fired or thrown out of college or never again be given an assignment.

 

If, when I was a teacher myself, someone would have shown me this things I would have failed them without a thought.

[CRAusmus]

I wouldn't say this is a new fad, or an old one, just a style.  Some photos are better suited with less contrast.  Even in film days we'd pull our film a stop or two to decrease the contrast, and push it to pump it up.  Photographers have been doing this for decades.  Some photographers just like less contrast, or feel their subject is better suited with less contrast.

 

There is nothing technically wrong with a photograph that has this lack of contrast.  Some folks don't like it, I get that.  Personally I prefer a more contrasty image with the full range from black to white, but I've seen some lovely photos that don't cover the full spectrum.

[Trenton Talbot]

It has nothing to do with the contrast (which is usually crazy high in "G&G" photos), it's a tonal range. There are circumstances that dictate reduced tonal range… same circumstances that look good in a strong key, either high or low.

 

But here's the thing: missing black in a high key image or white in low key is forgivable. But missing white in high key or black in low key is just… Quirky. Ironic. Bullshit.

 

I can imagine only one scenario where human being will perceive a dark scene without blacks or bright scene without whites: freshly inflicted concussion.

[CRAusmus]

It has nothing to do with the contrast (which is usually crazy high in "G&G" photos), it's a tonal range. There are circumstances that dictate reduced tonal range… same circumstances that look good in a strong key, either high or low.

 

But here's the thing: missing black in a high key image or white in low key is forgivable. But missing white in high key or black in low key is just… Quirky. Ironic. Bullshit.

 

I can imagine only one scenario where human being will perceive a dark scene without blacks or bright scene without whites: freshly inflicted concussion.

Oh.  I guess I wasn't seeing what he was talking about.  Your description helps somewhat though.

 

This is more or less what I pictured when he was describing it.  Not necessarily lacking contrast, but lacking that punch (kind of flat, monochrome is probably better) we are used to seeing in black and white in this digital age where people process it as such these days.

 

Looking at this image, there isn't much, if at all that is all the way on the left in this image, and I don't see anything that is all the way to the right.  Even the whites are not all the way to the right..

 

 

This is HP5 by the way if anyone is interested in what film this is.

[pizzaman]

It's a way to save an image that is otherwise totally screwed by unintended high contrast. Works well in both color and B&W. Unfortunately, the fad of making this effect into particular photographer's branded "look" isn't over yet.

Yea, or it's a suitable implementation of how a photographer sees the world and wants to represent it with their work and just not to everyone's tastes. 

 

To be honest, when people talk about fads right now I feel like that is a casual way to dismiss the work they don't like.

Right now, photographically, it's hard to say there are any dominant fads unless you are only looking at one type of photography consistently. So much good (and crap) photography is out there right now and succeeding, and it's doing so looking any number of different ways. There are so many outlets, it depends what you're into, but everything is arguably in style these days. I even see schmaltzy 80's style photography finding it's place in the right magazines.

 

Your way doesn't make it the right way. There aren't any actual 'rules' and if you think there are I can guarantee you'll find a strong photograph somewhere that breaks them. 

[Aswald]

I see some B&W photography which is really Gray & Gray. 

 

Is it just me or do I get the feeling that it isn’t really clear to some that there is black and white and the grays in between?

 

I agree with you on this.

[andrew brown]

OK, let's be a little bit correct here - Black and White are just the extreme ends of Grey, the extreme ends of the 256 shades of grey (not to be confused with some book about sex or lust).

 

Dodging and burning were lovely dark room habits to increase the degree of greyness towards the 0 and 255 parameters to add some punch gto the image.

Nowadays, in digital, you can just use a couple of sliders in Lightroom to achieve the same effect.

 

One persons grey is another persons black and white.

 

As for being raised on B&W in the 70's - I still love to add some serious grain to my low light images to remind me of how I used to load up a roll of ASA 3200 film then 'push' it to 12800.

 

We are masters of our past, and so are masters which part of the past we incoporate into our present - including our photography.

 

Utlmimately, unless being produced under contract, any image is of a style and liking of the person producing the image - the photographer. All other people are only viewers being allowed a chance to look

 

I always enjoyed the colour of my old Cavalier which was painted in Sunburned Red - that's a metallic brown to you andme!