10. Light and Black-and-White

The beauty of photography for me has always been rooted in the magical appearance of a photograph in a darkroom-developing tray. For me, those black-and-white images were the beginning of a way of seeing that continues to this day.

Though converting color photographs into black-and-white ones is now par for the course, a good black-and-white isn’t the result of simply extracting color. By eliminating color, I can take those elements of contrast, sharpness, pattern, and brightness and magnify their ability to control the viewer’s experience of a photograph. When I do so, I can create an image that serves as the starting point for a successful black-and-white photograph.