re: #62 Political Atheist

Little debate here at the 3 lizard lair. Does fire photography translate to black & white or at least very subdued tones?

I should mention that is propane being used to blacken & heat an ingot mold.

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Black and White

I prefer the Black & White a lot - but from me that’s pretty much a given. What I like in this case is that you’re able to bring out the details of the background without losing the highlights of the flame.

But in losing the color you lose a lot of important data about the fire - those colors and flame shapes are specific to temperatures and materials and have deep meaning to anyone even slightly familiar with metallurgy.

That said, I think that for your images with flame what would work even better is to keep them in color but do the digital equivalent of burning in the background details a bit more. In a classic silver print you could cover the flames themselves for a moment to give the area outside of the fire a longer exposure. I’m sure something like that could be done to bring up the background a bit more while maintaining the so very meaningful color of the flame.

Hope this helps.