On Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:09:20 -0600, Jim Gilley wrote: >There's always B&W, but (sigh) nobody is interested in that >anymore (sorry Warren, I meant publication wise).
To which Warren replies... Jim is correct! I receive a freebie trade magazine named _Rangefinder_. Every two or three years they have an article about the comeback of b/w photography. Yet issue after issue is 90 percent color. The b/w stuff is mostly historical. I've shot b/w and had a darkroom since 1960. I've shot slides since 1960. I even tried making color reversal prints on Ektachrome and Cibachrome papers. When it takes 45 minues to process a print, there's just no time to try artistic things like dodging and burning. Also, D&B does not have the predictable results that it does with b/w. Some of you may remember my many b/w photos that appeared in _CTC Board_ during the middle 1980s. Those were the days when 8x10 glossies reproduced much better than a b/w image made from a color slide. There was a real market for b/w. Some of my mentors were (west to east) T.O. Repp, Dick Dorn, Ted Benson, A.J. Wolf, and Jack Armstrong. Computer scanning has changed all of that! Nowdays, the art director has the option of printing in color or b/w with equally fine results. Moral: shoot slides. Personally, I liked to do b/w so that I could distribute prints to my friends. Now my friends visit my web page. Scanning color for web pages is just as easy as scanning b/w, and it looks great on the screen. OTOH, I was at the mall last weekend to buy a new pair of sneakers. One of the local portrait photographers had a kiosk with a beautiful portfolio of b/w family portraits. Considering that the stock house catalogs are still full of b/w films, papers, and chemicals; I guess the future of b/w is secure. For the last few years, I've been making a large number of copy prints for our Save A Connie Museum. This involves *a lot* of darkroom time, so I haven't done much personal work. I will in the future, however. When I have the time, I enjoy printing b/w--especially from the big negs. The bottom line: send in Kodachrome slides if you want to be published in the railroad hobby press. Later, Warren --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2836
