Shooting Both Black and White and Colour

traditional wisdom has photographers working in black and white or colour but generally not both. Most websites you visit, colour far exceeds black and white or else there is no colour at all.

You may note that I shoot both colour and black and white which makes me a bit of an oddity (ok, no cheap comments, that's what my wife is for).

Why do people polarize so strongly and does it have any message for me and more importantly for you?

It's my impression that colour photographers occasionally dabble in black and white but black and white photographers never dabble in colour. they seem to save colour for family snapshots.

SO the questions I might consider asking myself are:

1) Am I compromising my skills by doing both - ie. is my black and white weaker for the time I spend doing colour - or are the skills largely transferrable so time spent on colour isn't wasted?

2) Is any given photograher only talented or skilled in one medium and therefore am I wasting my time trying to express myself in both?

3) Is a certain medium suited to particular personalities or traits and does this mean I have psychiatric problems? (see prev. comment about wife)

4) Is it actually possible that creating in both colour and black and white is not only not detrimental but actually productive, helpful, and useful to strengthen skills in one's primary medium?

If we look to the art world for direction, I think we can be fairly reassured - painters, writers and musicians often change their 'medium'. They change from drawings to lithographs to oil, and acrylic, they change styles of painting over time. Musicians in the symphony orchestra quite commonly belong to a jazz band or play modern music. Writers switch to short stories or write screenplays, they sometimes drastically change their style - but they will use a pseudonym - hmmn... there's an idea - perhaps I need a nom de camera for my colour work.

It's true that painters don't work in black and white - unless you consider their charcoal work and pencil drawings, gee, I guess they do work in black and white as well as colour.

I admit I am having trouble thinking of a single famous (read well respected) photographer who routinely shoots in both black and white and colour. Howard Schatz does (16 books to his credit - twice in Lenswork, most recently for his black and white portraits of character actors but perhaps more famous for his colour work under water with dancers. Ansel dabbled in colour though isn't known for it and you rarely see it and what I remember didn't really say anything profound. Even Edward Weston got a chance to shoot some colour before his Parkinsons laid him low.

Addressing the specific questions. It seems to me that 90% of the skills used to create colour photographs are directly transferrable to black and white. While the luminous black and white print does not perhaps have a corrolary in colour, once one has learned to make quality black and white prints, it's not going to atrophy just because you do a bit of colour work. Arguably the real message here is the more photography you do, the better you get and by shooting situations that suit both, it increases your opportunities. Perhaps even more important, the success rate of a shoot goes up and thus enthusiasm increases which drives us to do more.

Arguably if one is attuned to seeing the world in black and white - it might take away from that vision to start paying attention to colour. For myself, I was a black and white only photographer for 35 years and relied on my monochrome filter to help me visualize the world in black and white (as did Ansel). On the contrary, black and white photographers have to be very aware of colour if only to recognize when a bold colour which spoils a composition in black and white, can blend in in black and white (perhaps with the aid of filtration), or for that matter, made more bold. All this does is make me more aware of the colours of things and how colour affects composition.

As to whether a particular personality is better suited, I think it has more to do with the way we started rather than inherently being suited to a particular medium - for slide shooters of family travels, it's a natural progression to taking more care and making better photographs in colour. Had we been influenced by Ansel's work growing up (I sure was), then we look down our noses at colour and insist on black and white as being the only 'pure' art. Of course, many of us, converting to digital, have colour forced on us whether or not we like and one thing leads to another. I would predict in the future that we will see more crossovers because of the technology. Even the process of making prints can be done with the same pigment inkjet printer with a bit of effort so there is no reason not to try 'the other medium'.

Could shooting both actually be good for us - I think so. I don't lie awake at night worrying that my dual habit is a sin, should be hidden like a dirty book, and only conversed about in seedy bars. I'm bi and I'm proud! (well, at least photographically)