A New Look at Black and White

For a month or two now I've been trying to find a way to do B&W with digital. Technically it's no problem, but the B&W look and feel I've cultivated is based on film, which has built-in dirt: noise, grain, haze, halation, chemical burn. The effect is something like mezzotint, something like drypoint, something like the drone in Eastern music. Digital doesn't have it, and it goes against the grain (so to speak) to corrupt the smoothness of the digital image in an effort to copy the sins of emulsion-based photography. So I've been trying to develop a new look – new to me, anyway.

I've been at it only a few hours. Took delivery of a 20D and 10-22 zoom yesterday. Sold my Contax G2 kit. Hell's own trouble trying to keep myself away from film; the 20D was an inducement.

Here's another try – one of the first shots I made with the new cam, in fact.

It's not very thrilling, maybe, to see these feeble efforts. But those who get what I'm up to may find them amusing.