Oh, What a Lovely War?

Anouilh

Even though most people live in relative security and are not exposed to dramatic World events, we are bombarded daily with the imagery of conflict and disorder.

This article describes the history of such imagery in a very coherent way:

http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/spip.php?article183

gino85

is there an english version?

AnimalRights

I got an F in my French exams back in 1979.
I would hazard a guess that I'd probs get a H if their was a such result today.

Fajitas!

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.horschamp.qc.ca%2Fspip.php%3Farticle183&sl=fr&tl=en&history_state0=

Give that a go - Probably not the best translations. Better than my LC anyways.

Mycroft H

I'm pretty sure there was a program on the history channel like this, 'ww2 in colour'

AnCatDubh

it makes an interesting (translated) statement early on in the article

color it reduces the emotional distance the viewer to the reality of the past, archives, to the horror of war?

Ok, the translation may not be 100% accurate but I do wonder about this from time to time. Some of the most powerful images which i've seen are black and white. I think they capture emotion at a level which colour can't compete. But you may not always want to capture that kind of emotion.

I think it was Sinead over on the "hopes 2009" thread who posted about wanting to do progress into 'noir lighting' in 2009 which is interesting because I think you come to a point where to advance you must regress.

Only recently did I do a shoot indoor of a gig/show (just for myself!) which left me with some of the most challenging lighting conditions that i had encountered. I had no option of flash but I don't like it anyhow so that didn't overly worry me. This gave me the opportunity to push the gear probably further than I had previously taken it. Even with image stabilisation deployed and ISO at 3200 there was evidence of motion and blur and there were some mixed results - some acceptable and some not. All to be expected.

Its probably the first time I purposely sought black and white as the output objective of some of the attempts. I think black and white can cover a multitude of technical flaws including those caused by unpredictable and challenging lighting. Combined with a soft or imperfect focus it can add beautiful mood and atmosphere. The added grain or noise caused by the higher ISO gives an aesthetic quality which can be quite endearing. The combined output of these technical imperfections can give a quality that is unavailable to colour. But its not suitable for everything. In my opinion such technical flaws have a potency that can render colour useless.

Flicking around the channels the other night I came across an old film which I began to admire in a very different way - it was a black and white. I wouldn't have described it as 'noir lighting' but it wasn't that far off. It was aesthetically quite beautiful.

I wonder do we get to a point where our expectation of a final output is actually technically far less superior than what our equipment can potentially deliver. So what do you think, in your photographic journey have you had to regress to actually advance your capability?

(OP - I hope that's the jist of what you are hoping from the thread and that I haven't derailed it towards due south? :rolleyes: )