Pictures of the Day – Tale of Two Ferns

When I look at a subject with my camera these days, I often think what would be the best way to render this subject as a photograph. Again, when I look at the same image in my computer, I go through the same process again.

Besides color, there is of course black and white, sepia, blue tones, split tones, antique, cyanotype, infrared, and others. But, for now, lets stick to color and black and white.

Take for instance, these two separate ferns that were located not too far from each other in Glacier National Park. I had a choice in each case of making them either color or black and white.

On one, I chose color…and the other, obviously, I choose to go with black and white. Why? Because using color on the first one brought out the intenseness of the green, and it was offset by the red colorings in the wood. Having some sunlight break through the forest when I made the exposure also helped to give the picture some depth. All these factors made it clear to me that color was the best way to go.

As for the other image, I went for black and white as there was mostly green in the entire image and not enough other interesting colors to offset it. Then I used a series of special digital filters (mostly using Adobe Lightroom) to render the fern a lighter tone while leaving the other elements of the picture a bit darker.

In the old days of film cameras, I would have exposed my camera (loaded with B&W film) using a green filter in front of the lens. This would render greens a bit lighter, although I would have probably had to use some dodging in the darkroom to get it to the shade I wanted to see.

It is interesting that photography (and television and movies, for that matter) all started out in black and white. Yet even though we have all the color we could ever want, black and white remains a powerful visual tool. It allows, in some cases, more emotion to come through to the viewer as he or she is not distracted by colors. Some of the most powerful movies ever made were shot in black and white, even though color could have been used. And, in this case, your mind knows what color this fern is. It doesn’t need to be told.

So while a fern may not have a lot of emotion to it, it still packs more impact, in many ways, than the colored fern. I just thank God that digital photography has progressed to the point where I can render any image any way I want.