I know it’s too urban, with the asphalt, parking meters and institutional apartment buildings, but otherwise this is what I imagine Area 51 would look like. A giant old fashioned radio tower that somehow looks a little weird, a big radio dish next to it, and a field lit with flood lights. Nearby, a pickup truck with a giant cross hanging from the mirror.
I haven’t talked about filters yet in connection with my film shooting. For black and white film, two filters are very important, a Yellow filter and a Red filter. Both keep your sky from being a very boring white. Yellow turns your skies grey, while red, which I used here, turnes it somewhere between dark grey and black, depending on conditions. For an example of what the sky can look like without a filter, check out how the sky appears in two of the images of this montage. Unlike digital images, these issues are not so easy to fix on film scans, and so filters become more necessary.
If you’re looking for more great images to look at, please check out the list compiled weekly by my friend Scott at Toad Hollow Photography.
Chris Nitz
2 Mar 2012Do you have a website that breaks down how various colored filters work with b/w photos?
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Mark
2 Mar 2012Hey Chris,
I used a few. For the absolute basics, which is where I am now, you can start with just the yellow and red filters, and maybe, maybe a polarizer. The simplest reference for them, such as a description of what they do and what their numbered designations are, check the Ken Rockwell page on filters, which has a brief section on B&W:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/filters.htm
For more science, or more info on other color filters, try the following:
http://www.fineart-photography.com/bwfilter.html
http://www.ephotozine.com/article/using-coloured-filters-with-black—white-film-4828
http://www.schneiderkreuznach.com/tipps/sw_fotografie_e.htm
http://www.rodenstock-photo.com/en/main/products/filters/filters-for-black-white-film/
Ilford has a useful but not eye-friendly page:
http://www.ilfordphoto.com/aboutus/page.asp?n=45
Finally, there are the Ansel Adams books, which I plan to read this year: The Camera, The Negative and The Print. My understanding is that he covers filters well, and I’m guessing that would be in The Camera, but I don’t know yet.