monochrome

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Climbing the stairs of the State Theater, Lincoln Center

While this photo seems unfinished, it's a trick of the light.

The first time I saw a photograph of people taken from directly above, I was struck by how much it reminded me of a video game I used to play. It should have come as no surprise; the video game characters were obviously based on humans, but I had never thought of taking photos of people as they walked from directly above. I forget how old I was, but that one photograph might have opened my eyes to how photography can change one's view of the ordinary.

Some time after that I remember becoming enamored of black and white photography. For my birthday my parents gave me a few rolls of black and white film. I saw them as a precious commodity, and was afraid to shoot them. When I finally did, I took my father's old SLR and shot some photos in the back yard. I didn't spend the time to really learn how it all worked (I never quite understood the DOF switch on that camera), and after I shot the roll, I felt bad about asking my parents to develop it. I still haven't, though I found the roll in the camera a few years ago when I thought I wanted to try shooting with an SLR.

I didn't really start shooting black and white photographs until eight or nine years ago. Between jobs, I decided to go to Paris for a week (my first solo trip abroad) and a friend asked me to take photos of the city for her. She lent me her camera and, it being winter, I decided to shoot the city in black and white. The results surprised me.

I'm only now trying to refocus on taking black and white photos (hence this blog). My learning curve is still steep; my work is far from finished. We'll see how it goes.