Comment: Essay from Linde Waidhofer: On The Color Landscape

As I am looking around for ideas for photographing colour, I come across an essay written by an American photographer Linde Waidhofer. The link of the essay is here:

http://www.westerneye.com/writing/essay3_color_landscape.html

Only recently, it occurs to me that it is difficult to look at colour. I am not colour blind or that sort, but when I pick up the camera, colour was never my subject. My subjects can be movement, shapes, lines, or family members/friends, but colour was never the main subject. When my assignment is asking for a particular combination of colour, I suddenly find it difficult to look at the world that way.


Living in the city of London, and with the gloomy British weather, most of the things are in grey colour (sky, road, modern building). There are orange/red bricks houses and tiles on the suburban side. There are green grass. However, as I walk in the city centre, grey is still dominate my slight. Colour exists. How to make them stand out is one issue. How to look at the world so that colour comes first while I am not dismissing the details of design is another issue. 


I was looking at several photograph galleries and I was surprised to find that people are photographing in black and white (or, convert photograph in black and white in post process). Maybe I can say to any of the pictures I have taken, that if the colour is not dominating the screen, I may as well convert it to B&W to emphasize the line and shape. In Linde Waidhofer's essay, she mentioned that loading her camera with black and white film is a big step away from reality: since the world is not in black and white. I think, maybe the lack of attention of strong colour make it easier to omit it from the shot altogether. Say, it is easier to shoot B&W to cover up the weak colour in the image.


There are something she mentioned at the end of the essay that I think it worth noting for my coming assignment on colour.


"A weak landscape photograph at best only reinforces the way we already look at the land. Whereas a strong landscape photo challenges the way we look at nature. But a great landscape photo can actually change the way we perceive the world around us, and our place in it."