Tom Zsolt made the following provocative statements during his
presentation (I‘m paraphrasing & maybe distorting…)
Your job is
to prove Tom both right and wrong! You
may have an opinion on this topic, and it may change during this assignment, as
you explore both sides.
Find and
shoot examples of artistic photographs where
colour actually would detract from the power of the image. Presumably things such as form, texture, rich
tone or silhouette are important, as well as the content – what the picture is about.
Then find
and shoot examples of artistic photographs where the elements above are still
important, but where colour is a
major part of
the impact of the image.
Demonstrate by removing the colour in Photoshop.
Put the
whole thing together in Powerpoint.
Start by
finding a quote from the net about the superiority of black & white
photography. Try to find a source that
no-one else does!
Then find
one black & white shot on the net (or scan it from a book) that you
consider great. In a few phrases,
reflect on why you think this is a better photo than it would have been if it
had colour, even perfect colour.
Then shoot
several black & white shots, and select the best two. This is a good opportunity to use the
darkroom if you want. Otherwise digital
is fine. You can either get the camera
to shoot in grayscale or remove colour in Photoshop.
I’m looking
for powerful subjects, great composition, excellent lighting and other good
technique. The main thing to achieve is
creating an image that is better art because of its lack of colour.
For both of
these, in a small font underneath, write very briefly about what you were
trying to achieve, why you think black & white was better, and an
evaluation of the shot (pros and
cons please)
Do much the
same for colour. Start with research on
the net about the importance of colour in art and photography, and again find a
unique quote or two.
Find a shot
on the net or scanned that is “art” (as opposed to just a pretty picture),
where colour is vital. Write succinctly
about why it’s “art”, and why you consider colour to be vital to it.
Then shoot
several colour shots, and select the best two.
These should again be well composed, arresting images, and of course
colour should be very important to the image.
Remove the colour from one in Photoshop, and have one slide showing it
with & without colour.
In a small
font underneath, write briefly about why you think the shots are good art, and
why colour is critical in them.
Make sure
you use Photoshop to reduce the size of these images before adding them – 800
pixels wide should be as big as you need at most. Don’t forget to change the filenames if you
still need the originals, such as when you make the 1 small grayscale
copy!
As always,
delete jpeg files once they’re in your Powerpoint
show.
Summary: You
need 6 pictures on separate slides in your Powerpoint,
reduced to the appropriate size before inserting them, plus a bit of writing
about your 4 shots and the 2 found ones, plus the 2 quotes, plus a slide
showing the 1 colour photo beside the same 1 with the colour removed. Save in the given folder (AWT4/BWColour) as your
name.ppt e.g. Gretel
Grimm.ppt
If you
choose to shoot the black & whites using film, they obviously don’t need to
be in your PPoint. Just mount them on regular paper
with your comments written underneath or on the back. You still need to throw your colour shots
into PPoint. As described.