Buddhist nuns chanting sutra in monochrome
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It was five in the morning when I heard the call of the morning bell. I dressed in my simple, brown layman's robes and walked silently to the main meditation hall with my Fujifilm X100T stowed away in a traditional brown monk's shoulder bag. While most modern cameras garner attention and occasional scorn the X100T with its classic Leica style that closely resembles the Konica Hexar rangefinder rarely gets noticed and I found it ideal for respectfully capturing intimate moments like the image above. I quietly positioned myself on a staircase and patiently waited for the right moment to unfold.
I didn't see the request for black-and-white only images as a restriction but an opportunity to return to my roots. Black-and-white photography in this day of color digital cameras has always presented me with a conundrum: what is the place of black-and-white photography in our world today? Certainly when I shot Tri-X and Plus-X the reasons were simple: it was cheap, I could load my own film cartridges and develop and print my own photos but those days were now long gone. Now I had what I saw as the finest color array on top of an outstanding, high resolution sensor in a camera with amazing controls. To me black-and-white photography felt dishonest.
These days most black-and-white photography is a bit "lacking" and is many times used as a way of presenting an otherwise poor image which might of been the main reason I had shunned it. Only when I started re-embracing black-and-white photography after many years of color photography did I see it for what it truly could be: to both powerfully present an image and remove the viewer from the world we live in today. While learning in black-and-white that learning process also hindered my ability to see its potential. I had finally discovered what Canadian photographer Ted Grant said about black-and-white photography so many years before.
Fujifilm X-Series cameras with the X-Trans II color array have four monochrome film simulations: monochrome and the same with either a green, yellow or red filter which help control contrast. These options are quite welcome as I usually shoot in "raw" format then using the in-camera raw-to-JPEG converter create a JPEG where I can choose the best monochrome film simulation. Much more flexible than in the days of past when I had to make a single choice without the option of changing once an image was recorded. The above image is presented in the unfiltered monochrome film simulation as it offered the best balance of tones. Green will give a yield of the most gentle of tones, yellow offering a higher contrast than the standard monochrome and the red filter offering the strongest contrast to an image while crushing the mid-range tones.
While I've tried this image in Classic Chrome, Fujifilm's homage to Kodachrome, I still like the monochrome version better because like the subject matter it's a moment lost in time, or at least our current times. In our world of constant connectivity and constant alerts being at that monastery at that moment reminded me of the mostly analog world of the not so recent past. While these nuns not only didn't have a smartphone on them they didn't even own one. Their only connection to the Internet was two hours a week in a very public office. And they were better off for it. While the Internet et al has made many aspects of our lives better it has also made us forget the joys of a simpler past where we were in general more satisfied with what we had. Without electronic access to the world for the vast majority of their week they were pleasantly removed from the unpleasant noise of the world like I hope this black-and-white photograph removed you from it just now. I guess I finally found the power of the black-and-white image in our world today.
“When you photograph people in color you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black-and-white you photograph their souls.” - Canadian photographer Ted Grant
Image: Buddhist nuns chanting a sutra, the morning call to meditation in monochrome. Pak Chong, Thailand. Fujifilm X100T. image: ©Brian Beeler
