From Oz to Kansas: Almost Every Black and White Conversion Technique Known to Man

Preface: About Beginnings & the Scope of This Book

Ninety percent of my photographic process is, in fact, not photographic.

—Taryn Simon

The magic in watching a silver-based, black-and-white image appear in the developer tray, along with the smell of stop bath and fixer, is what sparked my desire to be a photographer. My formal education in photography was in large-format, Zone System, black-and-white, nature photography. Before 1998, the year that I went totally digital, I was shooting approximately 6,000 rolls of film per year of which 90% were black-and-white. At the time, I made my living doing head shots for Hollywood actors, and those were always shot and printed in black-and-white.

When I started beta-testing some digital photography ...