When was the last time that you took a black and white photo? My first camera, way back in the dark ages, was black and white, but I’ve taken colour film and digital photos since then. This week’s photo challenge took me back to the past, thinking about black and white photos, and computers too!
Black and White Computer
The first computer that we bought for home use was a 1984 Macintosh. It had a rainbow striped logo on the front, but the display was in black and white only.
The first programs that we had were MacWrite and MacPaint, and the whole family got very creative with that software. After a short time, we didn’t even notice that there weren’t any colours!
Black and White Excel
Excel for the Mac was released in 1985, but we didn’t get a copy until 1990, when Excel 3.0 was shipped. Of course, we used Excel in black and white too, and our charts had fill patterns, instead of fill colours.
Colours had been added to Excel in 1987 (Excel 2.2), but even people who had colour screens used chart fill patterns, because it was rare (and expensive) to do any colour printing. Those patterns were the only way to tell the bars apart!
Here’s an image from my old Excel 3.0 manual, showing a chart with fill patterns. And in the line below the image, the manual says, “You can even import a picture to use as the data series markers!” (I added the exclamation mark – it wasn’t actually in the manual.)
Black and White Photos
Anyway, this week’s challenge was, “take an amazing Black and White photograph of any subject you want.” I wasn’t too confident in my ability to be “amazing”, but it was fun to try black and white photos again.
I wandered around the house, looking at things through the iPhone’s camera, with the black and white setting turned on. It gives you a whole new perspective on things!
This little angel, with the broken wing (bar fight?), is guarding the wine glasses in our china cabinet.
And here’s my outdoor attempt at black and white photography – a tomato cage in our back garden. With all the snow now, the photos don’t look much different in full colour!
It was fun to try this challenge, and the computer memories were entertaining too.
________________________
Seeing Things in Black and White
______________________________