Blackout from Aaron Keigher on Vimeo.
“In the beginning it was all black and white.“ – Maureen O’Hara
The world isn’t black and white, but maybe sometimes it is best viewed in it. Black and white photography allows us as the viewers to infer colors, to see contrast and requires us to look deeper into the photograph.
I have always been drawn to B&W photography. Whether it was the street photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson or the dramatic landscapes of Ansel Adams, the starkness of the images spoke to me. I wanted to create a Black and White Nightscape Time-lapse because there is something special about the tonality of the night sky and how it lends itself to being monochromatic.
Many times as photographers we will look at an image that doesn’t look quite right or doesn’t have brilliant lighting and a colorful sunset and say, “I’ll just convert it to black and white to save it.” However, I have found that usually creates a bland B&W image. Black and white photos need to invoke emotion without the help of color. They are pure. They need to be powerful.
When going through my library to select time-lapses to convert to black and white for this short film, I found that many times clips that looked great in color didn’t work as well in black and white and I actually had to be more selective.
