Black & White Artistry: The Creative Photographer's Guide to Interpreting Places and Spaces

226 Pages·2016·61.23 MB·English

by  Kimmerle Ch.

Copyright © 2016 by Chuck Kimmerle All rights reserved.
All photographs by the author unless otherwise noted.
Published by:
Amherst Media, Inc., P.O. Box 586, Buffalo, N.Y. 14226, Fax: [phone]
www.AmherstMedia.com
Publisher: Craig Alesse
Senior Editor/Production Manager: Michelle Perkins Editors: Barbara A. Lynch-Johnt, Harvey Goldstein,
Beth Alesse Associate Publisher: Kate Neaverth Editorial Assistance from: Carey A. Miller, Sally Jarzab,
John S. Loder Business Manager: Adam Richards
Warehouse and Fulfillment Manager: Roger Singo ISBN-13: 978-1-60895-967-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944877
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise, without prior written consent from the
publisher.
Notice of Disclaimer: The information contained in this book is based on the author’s experience and
opinions. The author and publisher will not be held liable for the use or misuse of the information in this
book.
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Contents Author’s Biography
1. Enlightened and Aware Photographer
2. Defining Landscape Photography
3. Why Black & White?
4. Photography Is Art Played in Two Parts
5. Technical Considerations in the Field
6. Photo Tartare, Keeping It RAW
7. Black & White Conversion
8. Subjects for Black & White
9. Scenes That Do Not Work
10. Previsualizing the Image
11. Exploring Our Surroundings
12. Destinations
13. Straight Landscape Photography
14. The Natural Landscape
15. Man’s Hand in the Landscape
16. Interpretive Landscape Photography
17. Graphic Landscapes
18. Wildlife in a Landscape Photograph
19. High Key Images
20. Low Key Images
21. Get Down and Funky
22. Become Intimate with Your Subject
23. The Myth of Bad Light
24. Studying the Light
25. Embracing the Sun
26. Flat Light
27. One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Photograph 1
28. One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Photograph 2
29. That Big, Beautiful Moon
30. Vernacular Structures: Exterior
31. Vernacular Structures: Interior
32. Surreal Subject Matter
33. The Simple Landscape
34. The Even Simpler Landscape
35. Embrace the Winter Snow
36. Whimsy
37. Long Exposure 1
38. Long Exposure 2
39. Cropping
40. Working the Scene 1: School Bus on Stilts
41. Working the Scene 2: The Church
42. Working the Scene 3: The Feather
43. Working the Scene 4: The Crosses
44. Working the Scene 5: Yucca and Joshua Tree
45. Eliciting a Response
46. The Score: The Pink Room, Part 1
47. The Performance: The Pink Room, Part 2
48. The Score: Cyclops Window, Part 1
49. The Performance: Cyclops Window, Part 2
50. The Performance: Chains Conversion In ACR
51. The Score: Rainbow, Part 1
52. The Performance: Rainbow, Part 2
53. The Performance: Shotgun Shells
54. The Performance: Zion Tree
55. A New Reality: Tree and Fence Lines
56. A New Reality: Tire Tracks in a Playa
57. Watch Those Corners
58. Camera Bag
59. Picking Our Glass
60. Conclusion
Index
Author’s Biography
C
huck Kimmerle is a black & white fine-art landscape photographer based
out of Casper, Wyoming. He began his career as a staff photojournalist
working at daily newspapers in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota, at
the latter of which he was, as part of a small photography staff, a finalist for the
1998 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for coverage of a devastating
flood.
After leaving journalism, he chose the more relaxed and refined life of a staff
photographer at the University of North Dakota, where he remained for the next
ten years. Throughout the years of photojournalism and educational
photography, he spent much of his free time photographing the landscape around
which he lived.
In 2010, Chuck transitioned to photographing the landscape when he
resigned from his staff photographer position and followed his wife, Brenda
Ling, to her new job in Wyoming.
Chuck’s photography style has been called balanced and formal. His
compositions are often simple and uncluttered, with objects frequently centered
within the frame. To this day, he refuses to apologize for that great offense to
those compositional hard-liners for whom the rule of thirds is an eleventh
commandment.

1 Enlightened and Aware Photographer
T
here is a philosophy within the artistic community, in our case black &
white photography, which states that art cannot be taught. The rationale is
that artistic style and vision are dependent solely upon the individual, and any
undue influence can only serve to dilute meaningful creativity.
As far as photography is concerned, the technical aspects—exposure, camera
specifics, Photoshop layers and masks, and so on—are easy to teach and fairly
easy to learn. There are, literally, hundreds of books and Internet sites devoted to
those subjects. This book will not be one of those. There are also many books
that aim to teach the rules of art and vision in an attempt to spur creativity. This
book will not be one of those, either. Instead, this book endeavors, through
numerous examples and analyses, to give you the necessary tools to consider the
possibilities of, and to think about, your own work.