A different start

We explore a what-if about photography.

A few days ago, on a photography blog that we follow, someone asked a question that intrigued us: what if film photography had been in color from the start, as digital was?  Would there ever have been black-and-white pictures at all?

Let’s explore the question.  Leaving aside just how it might have been done, suppose that photographs from the 1830s-40s were in color.  We would have a very different idea of the world back then, which we now unavoidably picture mostly in monochrome.  Some glimpse of the difference can be gained from old photos that have been colorized, but of course we don’t know what many of the colors really would have been.  We think Abraham Lincoln would look less like an icon or statue, as would many famous figures.  Landscapes of the time, especially the first photographs of the American West, would have much more impact.  Styles of photography would have been very different, and probably film would have had to work even harder to be accepted as art, since it would have been more technically perfect.  We could go through some of the history-of-photography books we have and choose which images would work less well in color, and imagine others that weren’t included because they had little impact in black and white.  Pictures of the Crimean War, the American Civil War and the First World War would have better shown how terrible these conflicts were; would that perhaps have changed history?  And maybe, as someone speculated, there would never have been black and white film at all.

But we think it would have appeared anyway.  However it was done, color film would consist of the three color channels we’re familiar with, since that’s how our eyes see.  And those taking aerial photographs would quickly realize that any haze would quickly make the blue channel useless, while the red channel was still showing detail; so aerial work (and anything dealing with long distances) would be done largely in monochrome.  Astronomers would take monochrome pictures in various emission lines, as they do now, to study the distribution of different elements.  So the technique of non-color imaging would certainly have appeared.  And artists have been producing charcoal or pencil works for centuries.  We’re certain that someone would have noticed the potential of black and white to give a different sort of expression to a scene.  The fact that color and monochrome are processed by different parts of our brains would just about guarantee it.

But we’re not sure how much would actually have been done.  Consider that there are exactly two monochrome digital cameras available now, one extremely expensive and another just expensive (or there’s the option of converting a color camera, which again is not cheap).  Maybe monochrome film would have been just as rare.  Which, we think, would have been a pity.  Working within its restrictions produced an amazing body of work, much of which could not have been done any other way.