Nora and Great Grandma

 “When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”
~Ted Grant

 Nora and Great Grandma

My granddaughter Nora playing the organ with her Great Grandma Kliss. I love black and white photography, although not all photographs necessarily lend themselves to black and white conversion.

The technically correct term would be monochrome in shades of gray, but that is not strictly correct either. Black is the absence of color (no gray) and white is the inclusion of all colors (not pure gray). But, then, I digress... In the strictest sense, B&W means just that: black and white, with no gradient in between.

Black and white photos eliminate all of the distracting colors our world is blessed with. Instead, it allows us the means to better appreciate the compositions within their frames. B&W is the perfect medium for photographing people. It exposes the souls of the subjects within; the freedom to share with their audience the distilled essence of  who or what they are.

In the photo above I see the seasoned, textured, and weathered hands of an old woman lovingly embracing her great granddaughter's soft, inexperienced, and uncorrupted-by-time hands, delicately guiding the little girl's fingers on the organ keys. The intensity of the little girl's concentration is unfettered by color, allowing us to more fully discern her total absorption in playing the organ with her doting great grandmother.