Thoughts on B&W and such...

Black and white is my thing, as you might have figured out by now. At least when it comes to photography and such. It has been that way since I snapped my first photos with my own camera back in 1974, and I have now grown old enough to see that it will most likely stay that way until the day I for some reason stop taking photos. 

A late afternoon on the small island of Ona. It was unusually warm, and suddenly a cold front came in, fast. An interesting sight for sure. 

The temperature dropped, of course, immediately like 10 degrees. Mamiya RZ67.

It's not like I don't like to see my life, or other peoples lives, in color. I like colors a lot, but usually not in a good artistic photo. OK, I admit that there will be a few situations where colors definitely is better, but they are not many, in my opinion. 

Weather again. Clouds. Sometimes they are interesting, other times not so. I like the fact that we got different weather around this area. All four seasons and all. I just like it. Mamiya RZ67.

I am not too sure why I feel this way about B&W photos, but I think it has to do with simplicity and the fact that I usually more easily find myself getting drawn towards a B&W snap instead of the colored one. There's just to much information and too much stuff cluttering things up when colors come into play. It's like the scene is so easily getting lost in there, for some reason.

We are not exactly spoiled with beaches in the true sense of the word around this parish. Still, we got the area between the high and the low tide which we call "fjøre", and there's a lot to see and a lot to find there. This spot is just a few minutes walk away from the cabin by the sea. Nice, huh? Nikon FM2 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens. 

I let small portions of light fall onto some color film from time to time. I am not to sure why I still load my cameras with that stuff though, because I never had any real interest in them. Like right now I know I got quite a few rolls just waiting for a good wash in some developer stuff, and here I am not bothering at all. Well, it's going to be great to see those snaps I did a long time ago, of course, but I still know that they will not be good enough for any serious use. You know, put up on someones wall or anything. And then there's the printing hassle, as you all know. You can't even use a darkish room when you print color. Pinch black, or do something completely else. Like B&W... or something completely else.

Another exciting formation made by the sea during millions of years battering the stones and mother earth. I'm standing inside looking towards the entrance of the cave. There's no roof on top, but it's a great one anyway. I love the shapes created here. Nikon FM2, Nikkor 50mm.

It's like this, good people, that the joy of printing B&W in a darkroom will never go away. You find yourself kind of having unlimited possibilities with each negative. Loads of different chemicals all doing a little bit different job, you can work with different degrees of contrast, and you can choose between different papers. Which is great, believe me!  Paper is not just paper, mind you! I can write a lot about that stuff if I get started. Here and now I just wanted to say that the Ilford range is a good starting point, and that there's a lot of great things coming in from Bohemia in Czech Republic these days. Foma is the company name, and they make film and paper. Good paper, as it happens. At least the couple of types I have tested has turned out on the real bright side of life. I even heard someone saying that one or two of the Foma papers was the only papers on the market today dealing with the Lith process in a good way. I don't know anything much about Lith, mind you, so don't take my word for it. Ask someone else! But I know it's great paper.

Just a kind of nostalgic snap, for me anyway. I grew up with these plants growing all over the place. They tend to grow willingly close to the sea, and they have to be used to take a punch or three due to the ever changing weather around here. Mamiya RZ67.

I just had a bunch of 30x40 cm (12"x16") Ilford paper shipped over to me. It's that good old Classic fiber based, matte surface, paper. You know, the one you can't go wrong with. Inside the same package there were also a 50 sheets box of the great warm tone paper from Ilford, in 40x50 cm (16"x20"). 
I got an order in for a nice print of around that size, so the plan was to try get that one done over the weekend and to do it on the warm tone paper. 
It's a sea and mountain scene, snow and granite you know. And it's going to hang on a wall in the big city of Oslo, where people stuck a long way from home seem to live.