Quick Intro from Me

[BrianMet]

Hi all and welcome to the mono sig.

for those of you new to the club or don't know me (a long time in lock down) I thought a quick intro might help, bit like all those business meetings I used to go to where we all had to introduce ourselves and do an icebreaker (key corporate buzz word at the time) anyway no level playing field or blue sky thinking here we are all in the same ball park.

All a bit cliche I'm afraid, I started photography at the age of 7, at secondary school I could get in the school darkroom at the back of the science lab with some mates, spent most of lunchtime mixing the powder chemicals only to produce some very poorly exposed and developed photos.

In the mid 70's during my time with the Army I bought a Pentax K1000, managed to get some funding for a photography section and got sent on a photographic course. We had a huge darkroom and cupboards full of HP5 and Plus X, so long as we kept the Colonel happy with his boat pictures, the RSM and football team and the odd horse and polo pony photo, everyone was happy and we were left to our own devices. always a good excuse for getting off other duties.I joined the TA in the 80's and spent nearly 12 years as the squadron photographer, another excuse to get into some very interesting places.

Mid 90's I gained a LRPS follow by a LBIPP, I also held a NUJ Press card gained through freelance work with Newsquest.

I still use film when the mood takes me, Fuji 400 was a favourite but now using Kodak TX400 which I scan at high res. I'm very passionate about about portraits, street photography almost always shooting in mono unless my mate Gareth (portrait SIG) drags me into his world of colour and fantasy photos

So enough rambling, but a couple more things.

Ansel Adams fantastic pioneer of black and white photography, his pictures are amazing, I've seen some. But I hate the bloke and any reference to him.
"It's a bad picture so turn it black and white" a phrase I often here, a bad picture will always be a bad picture so don't go there, by all means if the colour isn't doing anything then black and white can be a good alternative.

Will post more relevant stuff soon, if anyone has any ideas for a shoot let me know, I'm here, Facebook and instagram

[PhilC]

Michael Freeman writes well on b&w photography but he slightly misses the point regarding digital zone system. Ansel Adams’ example I follow (sometimes) but digital b&w came after his time...

[BrianMet]

What it was Phil when I started getting really deep into darkroom work every book I read was full of AA did this, AA did that, if you can't do it like AA your pictures are crap, so I gave a reading them. What I did get was a good appreciation of the zone system and with the new multi contrast papers Kentmere Ilford and Agfa to name a few including some great films and chemicals it was just a great joy to be able to print what you wanted