After I began shooting fashion, my appreciation of movies took on a whole different focus.  Sure, I still liked plot and characters, but I began to love how the movies looked.  Director Carol Reed’s The Third Man is a movie from the late 40s that isn’t particularly good by any real conventional standard… but looks sensational.  It is unquestionably the prettiest black and white movie you’ll ever see.

Just about every scene in The Third Man takes place at night and is comprised of a black and/or white color scheme.  There are no shades of grey in it.  Everybody is backlit and shadows become characters unto themselves.  It’s wondrous.  And it takes on a life of its own if you like the zither.

Whenever I edit black/white photos, I keep The Third Man at the forefront of my mind.  I blow out the whites and darken the blacks to create images where there are no greys.  That’s what I like.  And this photo nails that.  I don’t know why fog always makes me think of a film noir, but here we are.

I do have a color version of this photo (you can see it here), but it doesn’t have the same pop or charisma as does the black and white one. So I go with the black and white one!