I believe in black and white.
In my photography, in my writing. And in my editing, though everyone and his brother knows an editor’s pencil is blue.
I am colorblind, and that informs the way I see the world. It’s technically a red-green deficiency, but in the composite realm of RGB, two outta three is significant.
Mark Fairchild seems to know what he’s talking about, and he says that humans see about 1000 levels of light and dark, 100 levels of red-green, and 100 levels of yellow-blue. This makes for about 10 million colors (1000×100x100) and probably includes all the stupid ones like the “Mystical Unicorn,” which I am considering for my bathroom. It’s a blue.
Just in case 10 million isn’t enough, our computers give us something like 16.8 million colors to look at, though they tend to have different stupid names, like “e1ff00.”
Because I cannot claim total red-green blindness and am thus merely deficient, let’s say I see 20 levels of red-green. (I don’t know the actual number, and I imagine my insurance doesn’t cover that test.) This makes for about 2 million colors (1000×20x100), which is significantly less than five times that much. Or eight times as much, if you side with the computers.
Simply because of its large absence, from the very first time I opened my eyes in the world to this writing, color has been largely irrelevant, and I can’t say I’d take it back if the full palette were suddenly offered to me.
Rainbows are yellow, but they are no less magical in the kind of light and atmosphere that brings them about. UPS trucks are brown, but I only learned this about eight years ago, much to the great humor of my mother and wife, nee girlfriend. I cannot golf with orange balls, those superbright ones made for easy finding in the weeds. I lose those off the tee. And I am relatively safe at intersections; those are a red and green I do see.
I’m content with the colors I do see. I enjoy them. But color confuses me. No shit. Color plays tricks on me. Color is unreliable, that saturated temptress. So the application of light and shadow across objects—upon subjects—makes most sense to me in greys because I know where they are capped. I get that realm. I don’t understand it, but I get it. It is black and white, literally.
I cannot promise to limit this blog to black and white, of course (although the idea appeals to me). You will see colorized images here, differently from the way I see them, but you will see them. I’ll put them here if they make the most sense that way; if it is a juiciness of hues that makes the image overall, then saturated it will be.
Either way, I am looking for light and shadow, for stories hidden in reflection, for patterns.
That is what I want to share here.
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