Daily Archives: January 1, 2026

COREY SANDLER BLOG

January 2026: Black and White Days

By Corey Sandler

Another year done a full go-round, to paraphrase a great song by Jorma Kaukonen.

Farewell to 2025; some joyful moments along with more than a few which will not be missed.

Here in New England and in other far north parts, winter days sometimes seem as if they are drawn in black and white. Late sunrise, early sunset, and just a bit of brightness in between. I think that helps shape the flinty demeanor of those of us who live here.

We have managed to survive 2025, somehow. Onward…

A long, long, long time ago I was captured by photography. (From the Greek: drawing with light.)

Back in the day, most of us would shoot photos using a decidedly un-automatic camera: pick a film and hope it meets the needs of every lighting situation, select a lens aperture that suits the subject, take (or guess) at the right shutter speed, and when all was done send off those rolls of film to a lab and hope that the results were art.

There was always a sense of mystery made worse by the delay of a few days or a few weeks between taking a photo and seeing the results. Had I captured a good image, could the lab produce a decent print, and what would I do if my subject had her eyes closed, or if a tree seemed to sprout out of the top of someone’s head?

As my photographic eye developed, I began to learn how to process film and make prints in a basement darkroom. It was a lot of work, but it reduced the wait to a mere matter of hours.

By the time I had my first job at a newspaper, a new wrinkle: although we had photographers on staff, many of us also carried a camera and learned how to tuck our reporter’s notebook under one arm and grab a picture. The newspaper kept the darkroom at the ready as we approached deadline and more than a few times I tossed a roll of film to the photo editor as I dashed across the newsroom to my typewriter.

It was an adrenaline rush to bang out a breaking news story and receive a stack of barely-dry photos and watch them come together on the front page.

Imagine: by the 1960s and 1970s, readers were seeing words and pictures that were no more than three or four hours old.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Today the news feed on your smartphone or cable channel is essentially instantaneous: live video and audio from nearly anywhere on the planet. We are all living at the speed of light.

I guess that’s mostly good news. Although I could–and do–argue that the much slower pace of older technology allowed for things like fact-checking, context, and the application of news judgment.

Today things seem so black and white, although in truth everything is in shades of gray. Someday I hope to see the door open and everything return to glorious Technicolor. Without witches and gaseous wizards.

Okay, so as I step down from my soap box, I wanted to share some old-school photos. Today’s reverie is about the extraordinary power of black-and-white photography.

Full disclosure here: the photos in this month’s blog were all taken using a modern digital camera and the original files consist of color imagery.

But converting those images to a nuanced gray scale sometimes allows us to see things more clearly. That may be why most of us seem to dream in black and white most of the time.

Here are some of my dreamscapes from around the world.

Boston’s Garden

The Boston Public Garden is part of the Emerald Necklace of this beautiful city. I visit regularly as I make my early morning walks and I don’t need a color image to see the greens and yellows of the park. Photo by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

The Côte d’Azur

Toulon, in France’s Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region is in my mind drenched in yellow sun on azure water. I focused on Second Empire architecture, where no details were spared. Photo by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

Three Swords in Rock

Sverd i fjell (Swords in Rock) commemorates the Battle of Hafrsfjord from about 872, when King Harald Fairhair was victorious in bringing all of Norway under one crown: his. The historical details are a bit sketchy, but the lonely cove near Stavanger on the West Coast of Norway is not meant to be viewed in pretty colors.

Fire Down Below

The firebox of an old locomotive on the Bodmin & Wenford Railway in Fowey, Cornwall in the United Kingdom is the only color I allowed to break through. Photo by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

Sculpted by the Wind

The Sand Dunes of the Arequipa Desert in Peru are like ocean surf frozen in mid-curl. There are more colors of black and gray and white than I can count, but I often try. Photo by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

Salting the Earth

Salt Mound in Trapani, on Italy’s Isle of Sicily. Salt is one of the most ancient of trading goods, especially valuable in the preservation of food. In Trapani, the salt pans were first established by the Phoenicians. Entire nations depended on it, including Norway which used salt to prepare bacalao (dried and salted codfish) for trade with Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

Raising Cane

A Sugar Mill in Barbados. Sugar cane was a valuable crop from the Caribbean, but it required a huge amount of labor. That was the reason why millions of African slaves were brought to the islands and to the mainland of South America to harvest and process it. Photo by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved.

All text and photos are by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. Copyright 2026. If you want to obtain a copy of one of my photographs for personal or commercial use, please contact me using the link on this page.

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