Hello , 

I'm all over the place with today's photography food for thought.  

But the main point of the writing deals with the importance of our personal preferences, the materials we work with, and tonality.

Let's start with a couple of quotes from photographers about color and a couple of definitions.

When you photograph people in color you photograph their clothes. When you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their soul! -Ted Grant

And,

In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color. - William Albert Allard

Definitions

Exposure latitude is the amount of overexposure and underexposure light-sensitive material that can receive and still produce an acceptable image. 

Light-sensitive material is any material that records light. This includes the digital sensors in our cameras as well as film. 

Tonality is the perceived brightness or darkness of a created photograph. Many people think of this as over-exposure or under-exposure, but thinking of exposure as the only means to control tonality is limiting.

Okay, now that we have that over, here's today's photography food for thought. 

The opinions stated by the photographers quoted above about color and B and W remind us that photographers' opinions about photography are as varied as their work. And the choice between choosing color or black and white (B and W) is primarily about aesthetics.  

Before digital photography, we had a choice of making pictures using B and W or color film. And if I'm correct, the two photographers quoted above, at the time of the quotes, are referring to working with film.

And while there have always been personal preferences, sometimes the film we used was dictated by the clients we worked with.

When I started working professionally as a photojournalist, newspapers were only printed in black and white, so I used a lot of black and white films. But the magazines I worked with required color transparency, aka slide film.

I learned a lot about different films during that stage of my photography studies and practice, but I had no idea that learning about film prepared me well for using the light-sensitive material, the sensor, in a digital camera. 

Also, I preferred a color slide, also known as color transparency film, for my personal work. 

Color transparency film has a limited exposure latitude and requires precise exposure decisions. It's a great film to learn about the importance of getting our exposures right, specifically for one thing in our picture. 

Once transparency film is developed, the final product is a frame of thirty-five millimeter (35mm) film in a cardboard or plastic mount. 

Color negative and black and white negative films have a much broader exposure latitude than slide films.

Regarding camera operation and exposure decisions, light-sensitive material shouldn't concern us beyond aesthetic preferences because it's always about getting the tonality we want.

Exposure decisions are always based on controlling tonality for a specific thing in our picture. And in most cases, there's no need to consider the exposure latitude of the light-sensitive material recording the image.

Aesthetics aside, with the availability of digital cameras, we can choose between setting our camera to record in color or black and white. 

And when it comes to digital cameras, making pictures in color is a good practice because we can always convert the picture to B and W later while keeping the original color version. Additionally, we don't lose any image quality, and we can keep our options for display and licensing open.

And by the way, the digital sensors in our cameras are similar to color transparency film when it comes to exposure latitude. So, aligning our exposure to control the tonality of a specific thing in our picture is essential.  

On film cameras, once the film is in the camera, the ISO can not be changed unless we put in a new film with a different ISO.

So we can only control the tonality with the exposure controls of aperture and shutter speed when using film.

On digital cameras, when working in manual exposure mode, we can use aperture, shutter speed, and, since we can easily change ISO on a digital camera, ISO to control tonality. But we use exposure compensation to control tonality if working in aperture or shutter priority. 

Upcoming photography classes are listed below. Use whatever camera or light-sensitive material you want.