From Black And White To Colour

By Author: Rohan Sinha
Total Articles: 278
Comment this article

It is true that life is actually like a good black and white photograph, where you have your black moments and then you have some white moments, with a lot of other shades sprinkled on top of it. Black and white photography has always remained close to my heart, may be because now you don’t see them so much except for in the old photo albums, everything else found today is in color.

Not that I don’t like colors, but black and white shades have always held my fascination. I have even been collecting old photographs from various flea markets and antique shops so that I can renovate my house and add the required depth on the walls with these black and white pictures. My initial plan was to grab a camera and go about clicking pictures on my own. However, I gave up on the idea considering it might take too long and therefore, the hunt began.

As I moved about from shop to shop, I realized how photography and cameras in India have emerged in the last few decades. Finding a black and white photograph today has become a difficult exercise as most photographers and cameras in India click only colour pictures. Black and ...
... white photography is nearly extinct with a very few studios and stores still having some good copies. On asking these studio owners, I found out that proliferation of digital camcorders in the markets is the reason. With technology coming of age and becoming more affordable, markets today are filled with advanced digital camcorders that are multipurpose in nature. Therefore, the new breed of photographers is hooked on to these new machines and slowly the concept of black and white photography is dying.

I don’t know what to term this leap as. Given my love for black and white photography, I believe there should be a good connect between the past, present and the future. One should never forget to carry the good things of the past and take them along; else, the coming generation would miss many interesting and important elements of life that can make things better. However, when I look at it from an objective point-of-view, when has the future ever waited for the past to pace along? The thumb rule of growth is change and as we know, change is the only constant. Therefore, it is somewhere justified that with new technology entering our lives, a new generation comes up that knows everything about that technology, irrespective of whether they know about the good things of the past or not.

While, a few like me may still linger on the black and white pictures, there is no denying that the world has moved on to colour and is enjoying it. I, on the other hand will continue with my hunt for the black and white as my home renovation is still pending.

Rohan Sinha is a contributed author to this website, writing articles on Cameras India and Digital Camcorder. He has codified lots of articles on Document Scanner, Movie Camera, and Laser Printer. For more info visit the website.