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I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive. I mean too many people literally picture the world at the time to be black and white. Recall that look is just an

I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive. I mean too many people literally picture the world at the time to be black and white. Recall that look is just an artificial limit imposed by immature chemical technology. It’s not like people wanted their pictures looking like that. It’s even a common trope in modern films to use black and white when showing flashbacks to time periods around the beginning of the 20th century. But that’s not how the world looked! It’s a cheep and deceptive tool imho.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Well a colorized photo will only be more deceptive since it's just a guess. B&W aren't deceptive, they just are.
- randallsquared 5y ago
  B&W photos don't have a lack of color; they've just restricted the color to certain values. A colorized photo might or might not get the colors correct, but the B&W photo definitely doesn't.
dylan604 5y ago
>I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive. This makes my eyes roll like I'm a professional golfer. I love B&W, and even without using B&W film, I will still turn certain color images I take into B&W. There are lots of artistic reasons, but most of the time it just feels right. Sometimes, it's just an aesthetic reason of matching the decor of where the print is going to hang. >I mean too many people literally picture the world at the time to be black and white. So what? There are also people that believe the world is flat. There are plenty of museums full of paintings from well before photography was invented that clearly show color. Anyone that believes that the world was in B&W before color film just need to be walked away from as there's nothing but frustration there.
ryan_j_naughton 5y ago
> I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive...Recall that look is just an artificial limit imposed by immature chemical technology. That limit materially constrained the information that could be captured, but it didn't invent false information. It was a dimensionality reduction from color to simple brightness intensity. Sure, the information captured was through that lens/filter, but there wasn't some AI inventing/guessing at what it was seeing. The photons directly exposed the chemicals in the film. They are not equivalent at all, and your reduction based upon the fact that humans add an additional interpretive perspective to each is a stretch. I say all of this while being fine with colorized photos, but they should be accompanied by the original photo and the disclaimer that they were colorized. I think colorized photos can add a lot of immersion and trigger emotion, but so does generative, interpretive art. We shouldn't treat Monet's water lilies as an accurate portrayal of his flower garden at his home in Giverny. Colorized photos, while not as extreme as impressionist paintings, are still a generated piece of art. Perhaps they are more akin to portraits, which have been historically shown bias towards an unflattering view of the subject -- as when they are unflattering, they tend to not to survive[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutherland%27s_Portrait_of_Winston_Churchill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutherland%27s_Portrait_of_Win...
acomjean 5y ago
Reminds me of an old comic "Calvin and Hobbs" where Calvin's Dad explains why all old photos where black and white. http://calvin-and-hobbes-comic-strips.blogspot.com/2011/11/calvin-asks-dad-about-old-black-and.html http://calvin-and-hobbes-comic-strips.blogspot.com/2011/11/c...

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Well a colorized photo will only be more deceptive since it's just a guess. B&W aren't deceptive, they just are.

randallsquared 5y ago
B&W photos don't have a lack of color; they've just restricted the color to certain values. A colorized photo might or might not get the colors correct, but the B&W photo definitely doesn't.

dylan604 5y ago

>I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive. This makes my eyes roll like I'm a professional golfer. I love B&W, and even without using B&W film, I will still turn certain color images I take into B&W. There are lots of artistic reasons, but most of the time it just feels right. Sometimes, it's just an aesthetic reason of matching the decor of where the print is going to hang. >I mean too many people literally picture the world at the time to be black and white. So what? There are also people that believe the world is flat. There are plenty of museums full of paintings from well before photography was invented that clearly show color. Anyone that believes that the world was in B&W before color film just need to be walked away from as there's nothing but frustration there.

ryan_j_naughton 5y ago

> I actually think b&w photos are too deceptive...Recall that look is just an artificial limit imposed by immature chemical technology. That limit materially constrained the information that could be captured, but it didn't invent false information. It was a dimensionality reduction from color to simple brightness intensity. Sure, the information captured was through that lens/filter, but there wasn't some AI inventing/guessing at what it was seeing. The photons directly exposed the chemicals in the film. They are not equivalent at all, and your reduction based upon the fact that humans add an additional interpretive perspective to each is a stretch. I say all of this while being fine with colorized photos, but they should be accompanied by the original photo and the disclaimer that they were colorized. I think colorized photos can add a lot of immersion and trigger emotion, but so does generative, interpretive art. We shouldn't treat Monet's water lilies as an accurate portrayal of his flower garden at his home in Giverny. Colorized photos, while not as extreme as impressionist paintings, are still a generated piece of art. Perhaps they are more akin to portraits, which have been historically shown bias towards an unflattering view of the subject -- as when they are unflattering, they tend to not to survive[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutherland%27s_Portrait_of_Winston_Churchill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutherland%27s_Portrait_of_Win...

acomjean 5y ago

Reminds me of an old comic "Calvin and Hobbs" where Calvin's Dad explains why all old photos where black and white. http://calvin-and-hobbes-comic-strips.blogspot.com/2011/11/calvin-asks-dad-about-old-black-and.html http://calvin-and-hobbes-comic-strips.blogspot.com/2011/11/c...