Wells Cathedral Stairway, Wells, England
Well, well, Wells
One of the fun things about modern photography is that we can play with our images a bit after we take them to try out different techniques. I have been playing with alternate printing processes such as Cyanotypes and Hectographs, and in getting ready for one such project was looking for images that might lend themselves as colour prints that can be converted to two tone, black and white images that could then be transferred to either process.
When a photographer strips the colour from an image, the best reason to do so is if the original colour image is improved by the transformation. Sometimes it’s that the colour gets in the way, and sometimes it’s just that the colour doesn’t look right, and sometimes it’s that black and white has a certain feel to impart that works better than colour.
The image this week is one I took just about a year ago in Wells Cathedral in England. This stairway has been used for over 800 years and shows the wear despite it having been made from heavy stone. I like the original colour image, but I’m thinking the image in black and white might be just the type of image I’m looking for to try some different processes on.
Viewer’s choice time -
What do you think – do you like the colour or do you think the black and white is more powerful?
Fun thing to look back at some prints and try to find ways they might be improved.
