Ode to Black V – Endless Black

“I’ve been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors was black.”- Auguste Renoir

I’ve always had a strong affinity for the color black.

When I was little and someone would ask us the kids what color we like I never knew what to answer because I was thinking: I like black, but black is not a color (that’s what I kept hearing for years in a row) so I would every time answer something different: blue, green, orange and so on, just to say something that was considered “right”. And even now, every other color that I like and impresses me comes after black.

Black is the absence of light, they say. I say black is the hidden light, it’s the absorbed mysterious light, it’s a promise and a question at the same time. There is plenty of light in black, it’s just not obvious, one has to discover it. It takes time, and you have to watch very carefully and be prepared to discover a secret.

Black is a secret in itself …and I’m trying to find this secret… I just hope I won’t need 40 years as Renoir did.

This image is in a way a sequel of my Ode to Black I – Whispering Black image and it might be the beginning of a series, of a study about the color black and the subdued light, also a question I have and that I’m trying to answer and which is how far I can go with dimming the light till I will feel I have reached the edge.

It was not a conscious decision to follow this path, in the beginning, it just came as a need to explore the darker zones and it came gradually, but now I have some more ideas in mind and they will probably follow this pattern in the months to come.

Technical data

Camera Settings

271 sec. @ f/9, Nikon 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 @ 10mm, ISO100, 10+6-stops ND filters (Hoya Pro 1 Digital ND64 & B+W ND110)

Processing: 

LR4, PS CS6, SilverEfex Pro2, Topaz B&W Effects  (Topaz Labs B&W Effects 2 Full Review) +Topaz DeNoise + Topaz Detail