This seems like a very simple contrast and in a way it is. Black is the absence of light and white is all the colours of light added together. Conversely, when talking about paint, white is the absence of colour and black is all the 3 primary colours of paint mixed together. So it should be easy to take pictures representing them. Wrong.
When I thought about this I thought about what represents white; snow white, ice cream, milk, but none of these are necessarily white all the time. Then black; jet black, coal, obsidian, carbon.
There is also the contrast between metaphorical meanings, white is good, pure, used for a virginal bride (in the Western world). Black is evil and used for sorrowful occasions.
Photographing black and white is also not simple as they tend to confuse the camera sensor, snow often looks blue, black yellowish.
ISO 100, 24mm, f/4.8, 1/125 sec
The simple way to show this would have been to do a monochrome conversion, but that rather looses the point of trying to show white (and not colour). The snow still has a blue cast except where the light is pouring though the trees. However the image represents snow, happiness, family and light.
ISO400, 45mm,f/1, 4.0sec
This image shows jet (in the foreground), black onyx (the goblet), obsidian (in the centre), haematite (the beads), and black tourmaline (the ball). These stones were all often used in jewellery that was used in the mourning period and Victorian times and is now much prized by Goths, (the teenager cult, not the race).Contrasts:
- dark and light
- joy and sorrow
- near and far
- old and new
- hard and soft
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