Shades of Gray

Once upon a time, in a previous century, photography required a medium called 'film,' which is now a relative rarity since the advent and growth of digital imagery. I sometimes joke about seeing someone on the street changing film in a camera and suggesting I took a picture of him or her . . . "it was like seeing Abraham Lincoln walking down the street."
This blog is digital, of course. In my mind there is no pressing need to return to the dark ages of film. Virtually anything that can be done on film can be done digitally, but much of the power of digital is not adaptable to film. For the next few days, our photos will hark back to a decision we digital shooters no longer need to make: do I shoot color or black-and-white? With digital, we always shoot color but can easily post-process our images into what was once considered the only art of photography. Ansel Adams shot black-and-white, right? Here are a couple of shots presented in the honored monochrome format. Glassware in a window and bursts of fireworks change their visual nature completely, don't they?
We will discuss the very term 'black-and-white' in the next post.