Here’s another photograph from the North Dakota State Fair. As you often see at state fairs, there always seems to be a form of reenactment that relates to the heritage and history of a state, as in this image right here. To be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of black and white photos, not because I don’t like black and white, but because I feel like converting photographs to black and white are a fad overused nowadays for no thoughtful reason whatever. Black and White photos evoke a unique feeling, amplifying a certain aspect of a photograph. To make a photo devoid of all colors is serious business: It simplifies the photo in order to amplify a certain mood, feeling, or subject in the photo. In short, I think, there has to be a sort of conscious purpose to turning a photo black and white, apart from “because it looks cool”; black and white photos “look cool” for a reason! And if you know your reason, then you’re that much better of a photographer. This is my belief. I will not feign to pretend as if I’m good at spotting out good reasons on why I’d want to turn a photo black and white. Hence, why I rarely do it. But in this instance, I think I found my good reasons to why I wanted to turn this photo black and white: Vivid colors would have been a distraction to the mood I wanted to evoke; the lighting was beautiful at this time, as you can probably infer by the shadow casted across his face, but I didn’t want the warm lighting to be the main aspect of the photo or for the nice light to overshadow what I really wanted to focus on (don’t get me wrong, this photograph also looks cool in color); and frankly I just wanted to evoke a certain feeling of age in the photo, so black and white seemed right (I could have also done Sepia Tone but meh), which amplifies the subject of this photo of an old man reenacting something that used to be done in the prairies of North Dakota decades ago. In short, I wanted the focus to be on the subject’s actions and the historical heritage of those actions.
J.R. Photographs 