When I was first into film photography and shooting a lot of black and white (which was about 35 years ago), I never explored the use of color filters for image enhancement — in part because I didn’t know anything about it, in part because we weren’t taught anything about it in high school photography class, and finally in part because I couldn’t have afforded the filters anyway. With my renewed interest in film, and in shooting a ton of black and white, I’ve become interested in ways to achieve better, more interesting photos — especially in situations where things seem washed out, or when subjects fail to “pop” in the image. That’s where color (and other) filters come-in.
Both the blessing and the curse of black and white, I suppose, is that everything renders as shades of gray. It’s really not possible to tell the difference between red, green or blue — they all look the same, depending on the lightness of the color. Yellows, like the color of my MINI Cooper, appear basically white; you’d not even notice the white decal on the side unless you looked really hard at this image. (The car in color is in the inset for comparison; same car, same lower checkered side decal — big difference.)
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