Black and White

"If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!" Jesus

I don't do a lot of black and white photography. I prefer the world as God made it...full of rich color and tone. Once in a while however, now that it is easy to produce high quality B&W conversions in software, after the fact so to speak, I am inspired to try a black and white rendition of one of my shots. I have taken this little exposed section of birch root many times, in many seasons, and I was tempted to try again yesterday. In color it is one of my better attempts, and I had to wonder what it would be like in B&W. Polarr has a whole set of B&W conversion filters, based on the performance of 1930's, large format, black and white film. I ran through them, testing the effects, and really liked this one.

Photographers (and just regular folk, I guess) who like b&w say that it strips the world down to its basic, underlying structure, and reveals shape and form and texture that we miss in the riot of color. I think they might feel that b&w is somehow more artistic than a color rendition of the same scene...not just reproducing the world around us, but offering a definite interpretation...showing more than the average eye sees.

This collection is all about the generous eye...the one that sees God in everything...that sees form and structure and texture in the light of Holy Spirit, the spirit of creation. In a way what the generous eye sees is as different from commonly excepted reality...from what we expect to see of the world...as a black and white image is from color. And like the most generous interpretation of a black and white image, the generous eye always sees through to the underlying reality that is all spirit...the living substance, the loving life, that forms the core of common experience...the light within like the glow within a burning coal. 

May your eye be generous this and every day. Happy Sunday!