It’s my pleasure to introduce our newest Guest Contributor C.S. Young
A small farm cabin off of Hwy 150 in Caswell County
When I was sixteen, my next-door neighbor introduced me to black & white photography, film processing and enlarging. I was intrigued. During my senior year in high school, I studied photography under Byron Baldwin at Myers Park High School in Charlotte, NC. The program offered an intensive study of black & white photography. I was hooked. Later, I would go on to enhance my technique in the Commercial Photography program at Randolph Technical College.
I remember loading a film spool in pitch darkness and sealing the loaded reel in a small stainless steel processing tank. Next came the chemicals; developer, stop bath and fixer. Then, using an enlarger to expose the negative on photographic paper, dodge and burn, and then watching with anticipation as the print revealed itself through a similar sequence of chemicals. Finally came cutting matts and mounting the best work.
In many cases, I find color in photography to be a distraction. Perceiving color takes a lot of mental processing overhead. Creatively, black & white offers a more heightened awareness of texture, patterns, shapes, tonality and use of dark & light space. I also feel the intensively manual process of shooting, developing and printing black & white afforded me a deep appreciation of how silver halides in a film or paper medium responded to controlled exposure to light.
I can appreciate those who currently take time to shoot with and process black & white film. For me, I’m satisfied working a digital workflow which usually completes with a software emulation of Agfa APX 100 b&w film using Alien Skin’s Exposure.
Cheers,
C. S.
To visit my website please click – here
Monochromia 
Lovely tonality here, C.S.. The reflection in the window makes it!
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Thank you Cheryl! Yea, I feel the window is one of the more interesting components of the composition. 😊
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Welcome to the group, C.S. I have followed you for a while now and am happy you’re on board.
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Thank you very much Steven! I’ve enjoyed following your blog.
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Lots of interest in this image and the composition works very well.
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Thanks Alan, this was one of those drive by situations where you immediately look for a place to turnaround and go back. 🙂
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Always worth stopping the car…..if you don’t you can often regret it later!
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Hello! Welcome to Monochromia. Your photographic work seems to me very interesting and I will follow it with much interest.
Best regards.
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Thank you sir for the warm welcome.
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Awesome shot C.S. 😀 Like Emilio I’ll take that cabin anytime. I love the amount of detail in this image. Great work.
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Thanks Joe! There is definitely a certain charm to country living.
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Beautiful shot, C.S. I will take that cabin anytime. I had the same experience as you with black & white film. I took a course in junior college and was so into it that my father built me a dark room in our garage. I only used it for about 6 months because the next semester I went away to college.
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Thanks Emilio! I have a ton of 35mm & 120mm negatives I would love to scan one day – when high speed, high quality and affordable solution becomes available. I just can’t bring myself to ship my archive to China to be scanned.
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