One theme I have kept consistent over the years here on Weekly Fifty is that of continuous improvement. Kaizen, if you will, at least to some extent. I always (and I use that word intentionally) try to examine my photography, find things to learn from it, and then explore ways to improve. In other words, the images I share here on the blog aren’t necessarily the best of the best but images that show evidence of growth, change, and development as a photographer. Some are great, while others are…well, let’s just say they’re evidence.
That’s this week’s image, anyway. It comes right on the heels of last week’s picture of a similar hallway in Fort Barrancas, though with a dollop of hubris on my part. As my wife and I went through the hallways of this brick and concrete structure on the southern side of Pensacola, I thought this scene would make an ideal black and white image because, just like the picture I took about twenty minutes prior, it was all light and shadow. A study in contrast, or so I thought, which was tailor-made for my Fuji X100F and its built-in Acros monochrome film simulation mode. In capturing this image I would take everything I had learned about black and white photography (which wasn’t all that much) and compose my masterpiece (which it most certainly is not) with the hall before me.
Yeah, not so much. The thing is, I’m slowly learning that to have good black and white photography you need light and shadow not just present in the frame, but playing off each other in order to create depth, presence, and a sense of time and place. This image does none of that. While it shares a few superficial similarities to last week’s shot, all the light parts of the frame are in the top third while the dark part, the floor, does nothing to draw your eye whatsoever. There’s no textures on the wall, no sense of scale, and not much to draw your eye, really. In the moment I thought this would be a great example of the power of black and white, but in viewing it afterward I see it as something else entirely: a run on the ladder, another step towards the goal of learning more about how to be a photographer. It’s a ladder I have been climbing for well over a decade, and one that I hope to never stop ascending.
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