Pleasantly Petrifying Photography! — IMRAN®
My beloved late father gave me my first camera — a Diana — when I was seven, growing up in Pakistan. That’s how I began shooting black‑and‑white 35mm film. Agfa‑Gevaert is a name I still recall, followed later by Ilford and others, with Kodak and then Fujifilm as I ventured into color photography a few years later. Soon color became my only medium. Then came digital, from the very day the Apple QuickTake became available.
I barely find time to post even a fraction of my 100,000 color photos, let alone convert images to monochrome. Some photographers choose black and white as their primary medium. For me, certain themes simply gain mystery and drama when stripped of color. Fallen trees, rock formations, even portraits of old, wrinkled faces take on an ironically ageless quality sans chromatic distraction.
This dead tree on my Long Island, New York property already looks mysterious in color — you’ll see that when I post it later. But in monochrome it takes on a truly, pun intended, petrifying presence. Almost like a movie fable talking head emerging from a tree trunk.
The detail becomes even more interesting when zoomed in to any area for detail. There are dozens of zoomed crops I can imagine posting out of just this picture to illustrate the point.
Are you into B/W?
© 2026 IMRAN®
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